


to find the happiness I seek

by amusewithaview



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aftermath of Torture, Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Berserker Bucky Barnes, Berserker Steve Rogers, Blood and Torture, Bonding, Crack Treated Seriously, Discussion of Abortion, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Feels, Forced Bonding, Hopeful Ending, Id Fic, Kidnapping, Knotting, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mutual Non-Con, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, On the Run, Polyamory, Pregnancy, Psychological Torture, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Sex while Under the Influence, Super Soldier Serum, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unreliable Narrator, omega Darcy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-07 03:59:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 48,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3160361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy had heard all the warnings about going off with strange Alphas.</p><p>Unfortunately, those warnings never really covered "strange Alphas who save you from Hydra bases."</p><p>EDITED 11/25/17</p><p>After 2.5 years, I am marking this story as complete and not abandoned/unfinished because there is a complete arc here. There’s still a lot to say here and there’s still a lot I had planned but this story has been my greatest triumph and my greatest failure as a fanfiction writer. After a certain point the failures weigh on me more than the triumph uplifts me.</p><p>I still look on this as some of my best writing, definitely a story that helped me grow and made me the writer I am even today. On the flip side, it’s also been a story that has illuminated how damaging the comment structure and the desire for feedback can become.</p><p>At some point I may post more bits and bobs of what my plans were for this universe. I will not be “gifting” this work out for other people to write continuations of it, so please don’t ask. If you have any specific questions about this, you can find me on tumblr with the same name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which Darcy is kidnapped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/gifts).



> OKAY, so, this one requires a little bit of an explanation.
> 
> I wrote incredibly filthy bestiality knotting porn for the _Dragon Age: Inquisition_ kinkmeme. Rainne, being Rainne, read it and went YOU WRITE ABO?! And I went, uh, sometimes? And she went, YOU SHOULD WRITE ME OT3 ABO. WITH KNOTTING. AND KINK. And I went, ummmmm. And then I went, oooooooh. And then, several thousand words later I went, RAINNE, RAINNE, WHY DO YOU DO THESE THINGS. And Rainne said, STOP WHINING AND WRITE ME MORE KNOTTING.
> 
> TL;DR - Rainne is a shameless enabler, and this fic is basically her self-designed present for being an awesome human being. Who now owes me _tentacle porn_ , damnit. *coughcoughnudgenudge*
> 
>  
> 
> On a more serious note: I am tagging warnings for lots of things. I will put full(ish) explanations for those things in the notes at the bottom of the first chapter, and I will also put warnings at the beginnings of the ~sex chapters. Please read said notes if you are concerned about any of these extremely freaky tags, mkay? If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know but, um, just… don't think about it too hard, okay? Some ABO stories are written to explore gender and gender-thoughts and all that, some are written for the porn. This is more of the latter than the former, but it's _me_ writing, so actual plot and character development and FEELS sneak in left, right, and center.

They took her in transit from the Greyhound station to her parents’ house. She didn’t know who ‘They’ were, precisely, but she knew they weren’t good guys. Good guys wouldn’t kidnap her. Good guys wouldn’t schlep her to a disturbingly nondescript facility, strip her down, toss a fricking _hospital gown_ at her, and shove her into a box. That was not an exaggeration, they had literally shoved her into a fricking _metal box_ \- complete with airholes! It was maybe six feet by three, and padded on the bottom so at least she was somewhat comfortable during the second leg of whatever journey they were sending her on.

Comfortable, but terrified out of her mind.

There were only a few reasons Darcy could think of for someone, _anyone_ to kidnap her, and almost all of them involved her association with Dr. Jane Foster, Dr. Erik Selvig, and/or Thor of Asgard. She supposed that her mysterious ‘they’ might be one of the underground Omega-trafficking rings you heard about on the news from time to time, but she thought the odds were pretty slim. It was far more likely that her kidnapping had everything to do with Thor’s decision to bide a while on Earth, and nothing to do with her gender.

Darcy had nothing to do for several hours while the crate was transported, first by some sort of motor vehicle, then by some sort of aircraft, but think of all of the people who might want to use her to get to them. She also spent time wondering how long it would take for somebody to realize she’d gone missing. Her trip home had been intended as a surprise: her family hadn’t been expecting her. Jane and Thor didn’t expect her back until a little after St. Patrick’s Day and so, Darcy realized with a sinking sensation, it was entirely possible that she wouldn’t be missed for over a week.

A lot could happen in a week. More than she wanted to think about.

Instead, she focused on how _pissed_ Thor would be when he realized what had happened to her, that she was missing. He would tear through the nameless, faceless goons to get to her, she was sure. He might even get his superhero buddies to come help. Who knew? Of course, there was no telling what would be left of her by then…but that didn’t bear thinking about.

Time passed.

She didn’t know how much.

By the time they landed and her box was transported (vehicle again) to whatever destination, she had exhausted all possible Firefly and Dr. Who-related jokes in her head, thought up a thousand ways the mysterious ‘they’ could hurt her and resigned herself to dying an ignominious death. Which, ultimately, meant that when she was, at last, released, she was in fine form as far as sarcastic wit and give-a-fucks went. Darcy was somewhere around 99% sure she wasn’t going to make it out of the situation alive and that was…freeing, in an odd sort of way. There probably wasn’t anything she could reasonably do to ensure her own survival, really. She was doomed.

She blinked at the bright lights that flooded the box as it was unlatched and opened. Hands reached in and grabbed her unresisting form, lifting her none-too-gently and then setting her down beside it. They were kind enough to keep a grip on her until she was somewhat steady on her feet. Darcy slowly adjusted to the light, looking around and finding herself in a medium-sized room that looked a lot like a patient examining room in a doctor’s office. Her stomach immediately flipped over and made a bid for her throat, forcing her to swallow heavily to stifle the urge to gag and, possibly, throw up.

Darcy had seen this movie before and it did not tend to end well for the gal in the hospital gown.

There were two goons, probably Betas judging by the smell, stationed on either side of the one door that she could see. Both were dressed in dark gray fatigues with no visible insignia. These guys, whoever they were, were organized – and disciplined, too, she noted: neither of the dudes had attempted to cop a feel and neither of them were looking at her, and she knew she probably made quite a sight in her paper-thin (because it was _literally paper_ ) hospital gown. Conversely, this actually made her _more_ scared: if these guys were well disciplined, then this was a well-planned kidnapping, which meant that they had, well, _plans_ for her. Plans that had been thought-out very carefully…she added to her mental tally for ‘fastest possible rescue time.’ If these guys were _good_ at being bad, then it might take Jane and Thor more than a week to realize something had happened.

She fidgeted a little, looking around more carefully. There was a hospital bed in one corner of the room, a sink opposite it, and a small cloth partition that could be extended to block a toilet and a showerhead from view, and now that she was looking more carefully, she could see a dip in the floor and a small drain. There were no visible light switches, and the overhead lights had a fine metal mesh between the light bulbs and the room. It was, on further inspection, less like a hospital room and more like a cell.

Darcy jumped at the sound of the door opening, and watched warily as a third man entered the room. He was tall, dressed in the same dark gray pants that the other men were wearing, but instead of the gray shirt he wore a black one. Between that and the way that the two goons stood somehow even _straighter_ at the sight of him, she deduced that he must be higher up on the food chain. He was tall (taller than her, at least, not that that was difficult), with very clear muscle definition shown off by his shirt, and he was also definitely an Alpha.

He flashed a smile at her as he came through the door, nodding at the two goons, “At ease, gentlemen.” Goons one and two relaxed back into their prior painfully stiff postures, but their eyes never left New Goon. New Goon turned back to her and slowly perused her from the bottom of her feet to the top of her head. By the time he was finished, she felt like she needed a bath. It wasn’t that he was particularly sleazy, more that she really, _really_ didn’t want to know or _think_ about whatever inspired that flat assessing quality in his gaze.

“Take a picture,” she told him, “it’ll last longer.”

He smiled at her, very slowly, showing a whole bunch of very white teeth. “We have more than enough pictures of you, Ms. Lewis, from our surveillance. Thank you for the permission, though, I’ll consider it applied retroactively. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here…?”

“Pretty sure I can guess: something to do with my job?”

“Something like that. Now, you’re a smart woman, and very loyal, too – “

“Thank you,” Darcy said, because hey, if they were gonna build her up before they broke her down she might as well enjoy the former, right?

“ – so I won’t insult you by asking you to tell us everything you know about Dr. Foster’s research or Asgard,” he finished, then paused, clearly waiting for her to ask why she _was_ there. Darcy didn’t give him the satisfaction, if there was one thing she’d learned from Saturday morning cartoons – and then had confirmed by exposure to evil aliens – it was that bad guys _always_ monologued. “We don’t need to ask,” he continued on eventually, “because in a few weeks you’ll tell us everything you know _willingly_ , and then you’ll go back to Dr. Foster and continue to report in regularly to keep us updated.”

She decided to tackle to most obvious concern first: “They’ll notice I’m gone before then.”

“Will they?” he quirked a single brow at her, something she’d always wished she knew how to do. “Why?”

“…because I call Jane every couple of days?” she returned. “I thought you were keeping tabs.”

He reached into one of the many pockets his pants sported and pulled out a small black circle, no larger than the end of her thumb, and pressed it to the skin just below his adam’s apple. “We will call her for you,” he informed her, and Darcy jerked in surprise at hearing _her own voice_ come out of New Goon’s mouth. “We have your phone, so even if she calls you unexpectedly, _you_ will still answer.”

“You might be able to imitate my voice, but there’s nobody like me, _but_ me,” she snapped, trying to keep the wobble out of her voice.

He shrugged, but the way his eyes had sharpened let her know she hadn’t been entirely successful in her attempt to hide her fear. “Your presence on social media websites, as well as our regular surveillance, has given us a good enough grasp on _you_ that we’re confident we can hold off your friends and family for a few weeks. Plenty of time.”

Darcy swallowed hard, then asked the inevitable question: “Time for what?”

The smile he gave her then held all of the predatory aspects of the Alpha and none of the protective ones. “Tell me, Ms. Lewis, what do you know about trauma-bonds?”

…

Time passed.

She didn’t know how much.

Darcy had been in the cell for around a week, she thought. It was hard to tell since they never shut off the lights and had a lovely tendency to interrupt her sleep. There were three different blaring alarms that they rotated through, and she could never be entirely certain how long she’d been asleep but she never felt really rested. On top of that, she was pretty certain that they must be piping knock-out gas into her room every so often: sometimes she’d wake up with bandages on her elbows or hands – and there were always needle marks under the bandages. Needless to say, Darcy didn’t really look forward to the moments when her body forced rest upon her. She didn’t know what they were pumping through her system, and thinking about what it _might_ be made her body break out into a cold sweat. Her meals, what little they’d feed her – though they came at regular intervals – didn’t come with enough frequency to be set at normal mealtimes. She was probably getting one very small meal every twelve hours or so. It was, she knew, all part of the plan to make her weak, scared, and ripe for a bond.

She shivered and chanced a look at the ceiling, where she knew the speakers were. New Goon, whose name she still didn’t know, hadn’t visited her in person since that first day, but he’d phoned in four more times since. Each time he explained a little more of what was in store for her. She knew that he was waiting for the last of her suppressants and birth control to flush from her system, knew that he was waiting for a natural heat to start and then – and then –

Darcy ducked her head between her knees and took a few deep, even breaths.

Then he would wait until she was mindless and begging, come into the room, and satisfy her heat. He would wait until she was hurting and desperate for an Alpha’s touch, and then he would bond with her, but instead of soothing her out of the worst of her Omega instincts, he would _punish_ her, until her entire hindbrain was focused on appeasing him, _helping_ him, doing whatever she could to earn his approval. The very worst mix of survival and Omega instincts stirred together in an unholy cocktail that was up there with the most thorough of brainwashing.

“It’s what makes you the perfect spies,” he’d told her earnestly, that first day. “A well-broken Omega is everything their Alpha wants them to be. I don’t really want you to _change_ , even, gorgeous – do you mind if I call you that? You are, you know. Like I said, I don’t want you to change, I just want to shift your loyalties – and you can be such a loyal person, gorgeous – to me.”

She knew, intellectually, that even just _telling_ her about the plan, scaring her and letting her stew in it, was starting the process. She was terrified because she knew it was possible, she’d seen the Dateline specials. Hell, she’d taken the history classes. Half the reason that there were so many laws and regulations on the books to protect Omegas and Alphas during their respective heats and ruts was because of this, right here: trauma-bonding and bond manipulation. If they were smart and careful, they could keep her in a constant state of Alpha-appeasement and nobody would notice because the Alpha who triggered it wouldn’t be physically present. If he kept in touch with her via phone or vid-call, he’d have a hold, a leash, and she would have no way to slip it. She wouldn’t even consider asking her friends or family for help because, in that state, she wouldn’t think that she _needed_ it.

There was a hiss and a crackle as the speakers came online, and Darcy went as still as a cornered rabbit as _his_ voice echoed through her small cell. “ _Hello, gorgeous,_ ” he said, sounding disgustingly cheerful, “ _you been having a nice, quiet day? The boys tell me you’ve been almost completely silent. I’m glad to hear you’re settling in, it was making them twitchy when you were crying all the time._ ”

“Shut _up_ ,” she hissed from her seat curled up on the hospital bed. She bent over and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes until she saw bursts of color, but she didn’t - _couldn’t_ \- stop listening to what was in store for her.

“ _I got a more detailed briefing on our assignment,_ ” he continued. _Our,_ as if they were working together, as if _she_ wasn’t the assignment. _Our,_ as if he was thinking of them as a unit, a pair, already. “ _It sounds like it’ll be more long term than I originally thought, which means I might need to go undercover with you. It’s a good thing you’ve got a history of liking older men,_ ” he chuckled. “ _I’m pretty sure I can win your mom over, I’ve always been a pretty big history buff. Your dad I’m not too sure of, but it’ll be worth it to try, those pictures he posts of the cookies? They look_ great. _I’m really looking forward to meeting your family, gorgeous. Who knows? If this assignment lasts long enough, maybe we’ll start one of our own._ ”

Darcy lowered one hand from her eyes and bit it to stifle a whimper.

“ _Nothing to say, today? That’s fine - we’ll talk again soon. The boys tell me you’re starting to smell fresher, under the fear, so I’ll probably be seeing you pretty soon, too. You be good now, alright? Bye, gorgeous._ ”

There was another crackle-hiss, signifying the end of his transmission, but Darcy waited another five minutes before she allowed herself to bury her head in her pillow and cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The torture:** largely psychological, somewhat chemical, mostly geared towards creating an aura of menace and intimidation. All torture is perpetrated by Hydra, none by our heroes, so… bad guys being REALLY REALLY bad.
> 
>  **The dub-con:** well, it is an ABO universe. However, Darcy makes at least one choice when out of her mind on heat hormones. Her heat hormones also cause someone else to do something they might not otherwise have chosen. Also warning for dub-con because recently-Winter Soldier!Bucky is a walking dub-con warning. If you think he can reasonably consent to ANYTHING… well, I hope you've got a reasoned argument because HA HA NO.
> 
>  **The non-con:** will involve lots of hormones, pheromones, and yes, some of the good guys. I will warn for it more extensively when it shows up. If you want a semi-preview of what I intend, consider reading that DA:I knotting atory I mentioned. IDK. The word "crygasms" was given to me and that… pretty accurately describes it. This is not meant to glorify rape in the real world, this is a work of fiction set in a fictional universe where people knot and have heats and bonds and such. Again, real warnings later.


	2. in which Darcy is rescued

Time passed.

She didn’t know how much.

Darcy had been starving for the past…she thought it had probably been a day or so, but it was difficult to tell. Regardless, she knew she was in the middling stages of pre-heat. The extreme hunger was one of the signs, as her body sped through food in an attempt to flush out all toxins and build up her reserves a little. There were no toxins to flush, though, and the small meals meant that she had very little with which to build. She’d lost some weight; it was difficult to tell how much, since being captured. She _felt_ weak, and tired, and anxiety was a constant companion because she knew it was only a matter of time before her true heat started and _he_ came. The lack of regular sleep had taken its toll, too. Sometimes it seemed like the things at the edges of her vision were blurred, and she _knew_ she wasn’t thinking clearly. Time, already hard to keep track of, slipped by her in great big chunks so she’d lost even a tentative grasp on how long she’d been in their hold.

She hadn’t had a pure heat in over five years. She’d forgotten how twitchy they made her, or maybe it was just that she’d never been forced to inactivity before. During Darcy’s last pure heat, she’d cleaned her parents’ house top to bottom and baked enough to feed an army during her pre-heat nesting stages before she’d gone to an Omega Center where she’d been ushered into a suite equipped with heat-meals (like MREs but much _much_ higher in caloric content) to wait out the expected 5-7 days. Most OCs had a large stock of potential ‘relief’ options available, up to and including specially trained Alpha and Beta volunteers who could help an Omega see through the worst of their heat, but she’d brought her own. Unfortunately, toys could only do so much when what her body truly craved was a purely biological, _physical_ interaction. By the third day, Darcy vaguely recalled being in such an agony of unrelieved need that she’d wanted to die.

She _would_ rather die than be in that position again, or have _him_ ‘help’ her through it.

They hadn’t fed her in longer than usual. She had assumed it was because they wanted her as weak as possible for when _he_ came for her, but the lights had started flickering an hour ago. Darcy had heard people running outside, then some shouting, and then nothing. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she wasn’t going to allow herself to even _hope_ that Thor had come for her. Half of her thought that this was actually yet another tactic meant to break her down: get her hopes up and then dash them. She was about ninety percent certain that the next person she’d see come through the door to her cell would be _him_ , so she wasn’t exactly cheering at the thought of it opening.

Currently, Darcy was huddled in the corner of the room by the toilet with the partition pulled as far around as possible. She was watching the door through one of the small gaps between the panels that made up her ‘privacy screen.’ Not for the first time, she wondered how, exactly, the place was ventilated. Any Alpha worth a damn would be made _deeply uncomfortable_ by the amount of fear and distress scent she’d been leaking. That left Darcy wondering if it was training or, she glanced down at the nearly completely healed track marks that clustered at the crease of her elbows and on the backs of her hands, potentially some sort of _chemical_ aid that prevented the Alphas of this particular organization from acting as Alphas.

The lights flickered again, white glow dimming down to nothing and then gone, leaving Darcy in pitch-blackness. She counted slowly to stave off panic: _one, two, three, four, five_ \- before the lights turned back on, but this time – for the first time – it wasn’t the normal lighting returning, but a red light in the center of the ceiling.

 _Emergency lighting?_ Darcy wondered. She didn’t have long to ponder this: there was a faint hissing sound, a mechanical sputter, and then the door - _her_ door – was opening, revealing a hall lit with much the same red light as her cell and a man in the doorway.

Darcy held herself completely motionless, not even breathing, as she studied him. Her eyesight, all of her senses, were at their keenest at this point in her cycle, but even so she couldn’t make out much in the way of features. He was tall, broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hip, with long hair falling down all around his face. She put one mark in the ‘possibly not a goon’ column for the hair, and another when she noticed the way the red light glinted off of his _metal arm_. He was wearing what looked like some sort of tactical gear, which put a mark in the ‘possibly a goon’ column.

She saw his head tilt back a little as his chest expanded. She heard his whispered, “Omega…” and it sent a shot of fear through her heart.

Darcy took a breath and was _instantly_ sent reeling by the scent of the Alpha before her. He smelled like so many goddamn things: blood, aggression, gunpowder, metal, fear, anger, violence, and – underlying that – something incredibly potent, something that took that little trigger in her hindbrain that blipped anytime she smelled an unbonded Alpha and hammered it like Thor hit baddies.

She whimpered, the sound escaping from between her clenched teeth. The sound died in her throat when his eyes snapped over to her screen. She wedged herself further back into the corner by the toilet, fingers digging into the wall so hard that she was sure her nails would have cracked if she hadn’t bitten them almost to nonexistence earlier in the week. He moved, then, out of her itty-bitty window and around the screen till he was standing in the small space between the final panel and the wall, filling it with his size and sheer Alpha presence. Darcy attempted to push herself further back but, since she hadn’t developed the mutant ability to phase _through_ walls, there was nowhere else for her to go. She opened her mouth to say…something, probably something stupid, knowing her, but all that came out was another low whimper.

 _Fucking Omega fear-responses,_ Darcy mentally railed. She’d been too scared for too long to muster up her rage instincts. Not that she thought they’d do her much good against _this_ guy, who easily smelled like the Alpha-iest Alpha she’d ever come across.

“Omega,” he said again, and then he did something that completely threw her for a loop: he crouched down on the ground and _tilted his head_ to bare his neck – classic Alpha nonaggression stance. Literally _the textbook_ nonaggression stance meant to be used to soothe frightened Omegas. Either this guy was a class-A manipulator or maybe…just maybe…he wasn’t actually a goon?

Darcy cleared her throat, but all she could manage was a questioning whine.

He tilted his head again. “Omega,” he said, more firmly, “not a threat.”

For a moment she wasn’t sure if that last bit was for her benefit or for his, but that was silly. What threat could she be to somebody like _him?_ Slowly, ever so carefully, she loosened her hold on the wall and allowed herself to relax her stance. For a few minutes they just sat there, staring at each other while Darcy wrestled her brain back under control. Mr. Alpha seemed content to sit and wait, watching her every bit as cautiously as she was watching him.

“Hi,” she said finally, “can you…can you please help me get out of here?”

He considered that for a second, doing a quick scan of the room that had him frowning. “Captive?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How long?”

She bit her lip. “What’s the date?”

An odd look passed over his face so quickly she would have missed it had she not been 100% focused on her maybe-rescuer: “4-8-14.”

It took her a moment to translate that to April 8th, 2014, but when she did Darcy paled, swaying in shock so sudden and profound that Mr. Alpha had closed the distance between them and wrapped a hand around her shoulder to steady her before she could even blink. “It’s been 23 days,” she whispered. “They’ve had me for 23 days, oh _god_.” She turned and vomited into the conveniently placed toilet, retching until her stomach was completely emptied. “I didn’t know it had been so long,” she whispered brokenly, fighting back tears, “god _knows_ what they’ve been _doing_ to me if I was out that long…”

She felt a very light tug on her scalp and realized that Mr. Alpha had grabbed her hair and had been holding it out of the way for her while she was otherwise occupied. She went still, trying to figure out what he was doing, and then released her breath with a whoosh that was almost like a laugh when she realized that he was _braiding her hair back_. Darcy waited until she felt the light thump of the tail of the braid hitting her back (she wondered vaguely, what he had used to secure it) before she slowly turned to face him. Up close, she could make out more of his face – his very handsome, albeit a little bruised and _all sorts of stubbly_ face. He had light-colored eyes, though it was difficult to tell exactly _what_ color in the red lighting, she was betting on blue, a snub nose and full lips.

“Hi,” she said again. “Thanks for the assist.”

He nodded once, sharply, in acknowledgement.

“I…I need to get out of here. Will you help me?”

He frowned, clearly thinking, before nodding again. “Stay behind me,” he instructed, then stood and backed away a few steps before half-turning towards the door. He shifted, and suddenly there were two guns in his hands. Darcy wasn’t sure where they’d come from, she wasn’t sure she _wanted_ to know where they’d come from, she was just relieved that _these_ guns weren’t pointed at _her_.

She stood carefully, her knees still a little wobbly, and looked down at herself – more specifically at her paper gown. “I probably won’t get very far in this,” she pointed out, hands folding together in front of her and squeezing tight to prevent herself from picking at – and probably tearing – the fragile gown. “Can you - ?”

“Follow me,” he said, and headed for the door.

Darcy, not really having many other options, followed.

…

It took two hours to get out of the compound. Two hours of panicked screaming, blood, and distress…almost all for the goons. Two hours of silence punctuated by gunfire and grunts, which served only to underline the sheer lethality Mr. Alpha was capable of. Two hours during which Darcy made not a single voluntary noise, didn’t even make a _move_ without the explicit (as explicit as non-verbal vocalizations and body language could get, which, to be fair, was pretty _darn_ explicit when used by a master such as Mr. Alpha) permission and instruction of her unlikely rescuer. She would have liked to be able to say that it was all a blur, but Darcy remembered every single moment of those two hours in painstaking, Technicolor, pre-heat sense-amplified detail. She knew she would be revisiting those two hours in her nightmares for months, if not years, to come, but she was grateful to have the _chance_ at those nightmares, grateful that she was _out_.

There were no explosions to put a final end note to their departure, no obvious sign of the battlefield – the _slaughter_ \- they left behind when they exited what was, for all intents and purposes, just another nondescript factory in a long line of nondescript factories. Mr. Alpha guided her over to a plain-looking vehicle, quickly hotwired it, and then that was it, they drove off with no real fanfare.

Darcy quickly discovered that Mr. Alpha drove like her grandfather, which was to say that he alternated between going ten under and driving like a bat outta hell. It was surprisingly soothing to worry about something as mundane as being pulled over after the last few weeks. Although, to be fair, she had never had to worry that, upon being pulled over, a cop might question the blood-soaked state of the driver of the vehicle she was riding in. That was new.

It took her a while to push her fear back down far enough to clear her throat. For a while there, in the factory/evil hideout, all she’d been capable of were sub vocal whines and whimpers. It had gotten to the point where Mr. Alpha had finally cleared a room and then gently, but insistently, herded her into a corner and _pressed_ up against her, holding her there and steady and safe until his strong smell of _Alpha, protector, not-threat, alert_ broke through her fear and soothed her back into silence. Now, free of the installation, she wasn’t in danger of slipping back into that non-verbal state (though she could sort of feel it like a thin film, waiting to slip back over her mind), but having words and _using_ them were two different things. It took her nearly forty minutes before she was able to turn to her rescuer and actually _speak_ to him.

“So,” Darcy said, “we haven’t been properly introduced.”

The look he slanted her was…about as void of true expression as most of the other looks he’d shot her way, but she was pretty sure she was reading incredulity in the slant of his eyebrows. Probably.

“I’m Darcy. Thank you for rescuing me. And shooting all of those guys.”

“I would have killed them whether or not you were there,” he pointed out in a surprising fit of verbosity.

“Yeah, well, I _was_ there, so I just want you to know that I appreciate it. The shooting, I mean. Those were… _not_ nice people.”

“No,” he agreed, and she was pretty sure the look on his face _now_ was appropriately described as MurderDeathKill.

“And you are…?”

He frowned, shoulders tensing. “Soldier,” he said shortly.

Darcy squinted at him, “I know _what_ you are, that was pretty obvious after…yeah, but _who_ are you?”

He appeared to be struggling, lips twisting and eyebrows furrowing. “Barnes,” he said after a few tense moments during which Darcy started to wonder if this – asking for his name – would be the tipping point that turned Mr. Alpha from unlikely rescuer to cautionary tale.

“… Can I call you ‘Barney’?” she asked, because apparently not even nearly a month in _his_ ‘care’ could give her a verbal filter. Plus, she justified to herself, not only had he gotten her out of the facility run by the mysterious ‘they,’ he’d _also_ made it a priority to find her clothing that was neither made of paper nor the shade of dull fatigue-gray that she was probably going to spend the rest of her life associating with captivity and trauma. She kind of figured that, at this point, he was at least a little invested in keeping her alive.

“No,” he said, such finality in his tone that she instantly struck ‘Barney’ from her mental records.

“Right, got it. Well, thank you, _Barnes_ , for the rescue. And the clothes.” She watched buildings go by for a little while, trying to figure out where she was. It was about nine at night, so it was a little dark to be looking for a skyline. On top of that, it was overcast, a fine drizzle pouring down, and misty too. She had no idea where she was, but she knew she was better off than she’d been even just a few hours ago. Still… “Where are we?”

“Washington D.C.”

“Where are we _going?_ ”

“Elsewhere.”

“Can we stop?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’s not safe,” he said, looking impatient.

“But…” she chewed her lip, trying to avoid the spots she’d gnawed till they were ragged during her stay with the ‘they.’ “But,” she started again, tentative, “you…killed all of those guys, right? They’re dead. Aren’t we – isn’t it safe, now?”

“There are more.”

“How _many_ more?” Darcy asked, because she knew she hadn’t seen _him_ among the many that Barnes had shot, and _yes_ she had been looking. She hadn’t smelled him either, and she was sure she woud have recognized his scent, even over all of the blood and…other things. There had been no sign of him, though, nothing more than a faint scent trail, obviously days old. Not so old that it had come from when she’d first arrived there, though, which meant he’d visited the facility more often than he’d indicated in their little ‘chats.’ Not surprising that he’d lied but…she thought of those track marks, of being gassed and what could have happened if they took her _out_ of her cell, and shivered. “Who _were_ they?” she whispered.

“Hydra,” he said quietly.

“Hydra?” she repeated, confused. “The old Nazi offshoot? I thought – didn’t they go away? Get defeated pretty permanently at the end of WW2?”

His lips twisted into something derisive, “Cut off one head – “

“And another two will grow in its place, yeah, I took the class, saw the film strips, wrote the report. You know, in Greek mythology it’s _three_ heads for every one cut off. I always wondered if they sucked at mythology, or maybe their recruiting efforts were shoddy…it’s not as funny, now,” she muttered.

He shrugged noncommittally.

“You’re not laughing,” she pointed out.

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” he offered, sounding so mechanical that Darcy genuinely giggled.

“I – thanks. I needed that.”

Barnes nodded.

“There are people I could call…” she started to offer, but then she remembered what _he_ had said: about how they’d monitored her, her friends, _and_ her family. Thinking about it, she couldn’t help but wonder how big the organization would have to be, how much influence and money it would have to have that it could spare some for little old her. “Never mind,” she said after a moment, “I…I don’t know if there’s a way I could get in touch with them that – that Hydra couldn’t trace.”

Barnes shrugged again.

Clearly, he was not going to offer any sort of opinion, so it was completely up to her. Darcy felt the weight of that responsibility, the weight of that _concern_ settle over her and gulped. Did she want to risk it? Was it worth the risk? “Can I…will I be safe with you…for a while?”

“Yes,” he said after a moment of consideration.

“Okay, then.” She felt the perpetual itchy-clawing sense of fear that had been lodged in her stomach recede a little. She was on the run with a strange Alpha who was frighteningly good with guns and had a metal arm that was _super_ strong, she’d been held by a splinter terrorist Nazi all-of-the-awful-word-salad-words group for nearly a month while they did god-knew-what to her, and she was going to go into heat probably some time in the next two to three days. _My memoirs are going to be much more interesting reading than I had intended,_ Darcy thought. “I’m going to try and get some sleep,” she said, “will you please wake me up if you stop?”

Barnes nodded.

“Thanks,” Darcy said, offering him a very brief smile. She settled back in the seat, twisting so that her back was to the door and she could curl on her side a little. She didn’t actually think that she would fall asleep (strange car, strange Alpha, strange _everything_ ), but she needed to rest and think and _not_ worry about conversing with her extremely taciturn rescuer.

She spent a little while thinking about her options: who she could call, whether or not a burner phone was something that real people used, all of the logistics for a problem she’d never thought to face. Then she drifted for a while, thinking about her family, Jane, Erik, Thor, had anyone missed her yet? Noticed that _she_ was missing? She drifted, and planned, and – eventually – slipped into sleep between one thought and the next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After today, I will update once a week (on Sunday) until it is finished. SCOUT'S HONOR.


	3. in which there is a tentative plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaand this is the last update till next week. Also, thank you to everybody commenting, kudosing, and bookmarking. I appreciate that you're coming with me on this strange, strange journey into the lands of ABO pr0n - knotting and heat-sex and bonding, oh my!

Darcy woke very slowly and gradually, and she felt _fantastic_. It was the first time in she wasn’t entirely sure _how_ long that she’d woken _naturally_ , and not to rude alarms or _his_ crude insinuations. She hummed and stretched, opening her eyes and – oh. Oh, right. She saw the dashboard and the window and… the car wasn’t moving, why? She turned and there was Mr. Alpha - _Barnes_ \- sitting in the driver’s seat and _watching her_. The feeling of safety didn’t exactly evaporate, but she did feel a spike of adrenaline run through her. She could smell him, and she realized that his smell was probably about half the reason she’d woken feeling so good. She was an Omega about to go into heat, and she’d woken with the smell of a proven, protective and – if she couldn’t admit it in the safety of her own head, where else? - _virile_ smelling Alpha inundating her. Half of her instinctual drives were practically purring in satisfaction, while the other half were still working to understand that she was _out_ of _his_ hold and in relative safety.

‘Relative,’ she thought to herself, meeting Barnes’s eyes, and suppressed a shiver that might not have been entirely fear-inspired. _Stupid Omega instincts,_ she sighed to herself. “Um,” she said eloquently, “good… morning?”

“It’s 4:13AM,” he informed her.

“Good night, then?” She sat up and straightened her over-large shirt where the hem had gotten bunched up at her waist. “So, why have we stopped?”

“We’re switchin’ cars.”

“Oh.” Darcy glanced around: they were in the middle of a Wal-Mart parking lot. There were a few other cars in the lot, probably belonging to employees, if she had to guess. “Have you got one picked out already?”

“Not here,” he said, and started the car up again.

She refrained from asking him why they’d stopped; she somehow doubted that he’d give her an answer that actually _explained_ anything. “Where are we?” she asked instead. They’d been in D.C. when she went to sleep, and that was at least six hours past. Since she didn’t think Barnes had much in the way of respect for traffic laws, they could be anywhere along the coast by that point, or even smack dab in the middle of the heartland.

“Does it matter?”

Darcy throttled back her automatic, _Of course!_ and actually thought about it. It was clear that he had no intention of stopping and, well, the farther they got from D.C. and its metropolitan area, the better. “Where are we _going_ , then?”

“Somewhere safe.”

She spent a moment mulling over the idea of ‘safety’ and what that meant to _her,_ a twenty-something Omega whose worst life experiences had all been in the last month, as opposed to what it might mean to an Alpha as strong, well-trained and _ruthless_ as Barnes. Darcy shifted, wincing as she caught a whiff of her _own_ smell, almost unnoticeable to her but she was probably getting to the head-turning, that’s-one-ripe-Omega stage. Her heat was inevitable, and she really _really_ needed to prepare.

“South Carolina,” Barnes said, interrupting her thoughts.

“South Carolina?” she echoed. “’Safety’ is in _South Carolina?_ ”

He nodded.

“Huh, never would have guessed.” Darcy fidgeted, waiting until he’d finally pulled to a stop in what looked the _bad_ part of whatever town, ‘burg, suburb, or city they were in. Judging by the quick navigation, she assumed that he had found this particular area before parking in the Wal-Mart with her. “I’m going into heat,” she blurted _just_ as he released his seatbelt.

He froze, said, “I know,” and then just… got out of the car.

Darcy, nonplussed, watched him walk up to another nondescript vehicle – this one was a muddy blue, as opposed to the dull tan of the car they’d _been_ using – and calmly break the door handle (using his metal hand, of course), slip in and start it. He half-climbed out and turned to look back at her, an expectant look on his face as if to say, ‘Well? What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?’ It was entirely possible, Darcy thought as she got out of the old (stolen) car and into the new ( _stolen_ ) car, that she was ascribing too much in the way of emotion and/or _personality_ to Barnes. What did they call it? Not Stockholm, she hadn’t been kidnapped; it was some other syndrome invented and likely named by somebody who’d never experienced it.

“That’s it? _I know?_ ” she said as she buckled her seatbelt.

Barnes’s hands tensed on the wheel, something she only noticed because she was watching him.

“Because, you know, this is pretty serious,” she went on, and on some level she realized that she was starting to panic, to babble, but she couldn’t really stop herself. “This is my first pure heat in _years_ and I’m not really sure how it’s gonna go. I mean, it’ll go better than it would’ve if you _hadn’t_ saved me. What they had planned for me – “ she bit the inside of her cheek when her voice went so high it nearly became a whine. “This is a big deal, we - _I_ need to make some sort of preparations, I’m already putting out scent like _crazy_ , so it’s gotta be coming soon – “

“ _I know._ ”

She glanced over and finally, really, _looked_ at him: at his hands clenched on the wheel, the muscles in the side of his jaw tense and jumping, the way his nostrils were flared, his upper lip curling back just enough to show the faint points of his canines, and how his pupils were big even for the dim light cast by the streetlamps. “Oh,” she said faintly. “You know.”

He glanced over at her and the light caught his eyes. For a moment he looked so predatory, so _hungry_ , that the hair on the back of Darcy’s neck stood straight up. Oddly enough, she didn’t have the same instantaneous fear reaction she’d had when _he_ had displayed his more aggressive Alpha traits, and she hadn’t even seen _him_ be anywhere _near_ as aggressive as Barnes had been when he got them out of that factory. It was a contradictory reaction, and not one she felt especially keen on parsing out at that particular juncture.

“I could go to an Omega Center,” she offered. “I wouldn’t even have to give my name, they’ve got laws for this sort of thing. They could help me get through my heat. I should be safe there for… however long it takes.”

“ _Should?_ ” Barnes asked, voice a little gravelly.

“Well, I don’t think they’re exactly set up for Hydra-refugees,” she pointed out dryly, “but they’re equipped to help Omegas deal with heats in all sorts of ways, so, I mean, I think that’s probably my best option.”

“No.”

“No? Do you have a better idea?”

He grimaced and gave a one-shoulder shrug that wasn’t exactly illuminating.

“Well? Do you?” she prodded. “Because if you don’t, there’s an Omega Center in almost every county. You could just… drop me off. I’ll get through my heat and then… figure everything else out. Somehow.”

“You won’t be safe.”

Darcy rubbed her face and tried not to notice how grimy and gritty she felt. “I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever be safe again,” she admitted.

There was a spike of scent, strong _Alpha-musk, virile, protector_.

“Barnes.” She was starting to get a little alarmed, “ _Barnes,_ you are _not_ my Alpha. I don’t have one, or _want_ one right now.”

He seemed to be fighting for his words and – for the first time – Darcy wondered if he was fighting through a naturally taciturn personality, or through a welter of Alpha instincts. “I can keep you safe.”

“Can you keep me safe from _you?_ ” she asked bluntly.

Barnes snarled soundlessly and the wheel _dented_ under his metal hand.

“You can protect me, I believe you can protect me and keep me safe,” she babbled, staring at the no-longer-circular wheel. “I just… I don’t want an Alpha seeing to my heat, okay? If I went to an Omega Center, I’d be using _toys_ and it would suck, but that’s my choice, okay? I… Barnes, _please,_ just let me go to an Omega Center.”

“Toys,” he said abruptly.

“What?”

“You said you’d use ‘toys.’ You’d… take care of your heat yourself.”

“Well, yeah.”

“You can do that at the safe house.”

“But – “

“I can _protect you_ at the safe house,” he said determinedly.

“Barnes…” she considered objecting again, but, realistically, even if she did there was no guarantee he would listen. If he _didn’t_ want to let her go, she wasn’t going to get away. She watched him watch the road and bit her lip, not even caring when she broke a scab because the truth was this: if he didn’t want to listen to her, she couldn’t stop him. “Okay,” she said softly, “we’ll go to your safe house. We’re gonna need to stop though, we’ll need supplies.”

He shook his head: “I’ll make a run. You’re too close, your scent…”

“I… alright. I like the banana nutrition shakes,” she offered.

He nodded and seemed to relax a little.

Darcy, on the other hand, felt that lump of fear put out new arms and legs, the better to wail on her heart and lungs.

…

They reached Barnes’s safe house less than an hour later. It was a small forest cabin: it looked like your average yuppie vacation house. It looked, Darcy thought, startlingly picturesque for the place she would probably spend the next few days screaming herself hoarse in. Then again: deserted woods, lonely cabin, it could just as easily be the locale for a horror picture, complete with ambiguously-aligned and mysterious stranger. Barnes had let her into the cabin – shockingly enough, he had even used a _key_ , though, to be fair, hiding a key under a rock in the garden wasn’t exactly ‘secure’ – before driving off again to get supplies.

Darcy wandered through the small building, inhaling deeply, but she caught no scents but her own. There was a main room that was open-concept: a combined kitchen, living area, entertainment area, and – surprisingly – library. Beyond it, down a short hall, there was one large bedroom and, on the opposite side of the hall, an equally large bathroom. Darcy stared at the shower with naked longing for a minute or two, before she decided that taking stock of her current resources was _slightly_ more important than getting clean.

Plus, she’d kind of like to have clean clothing to change _into_ after a shower.

She tore through the cabin like a whirlwind, finding a decent collection of canned foods and various other long-lasting goods. There were linens in a large wooden chest in the bedroom: sheets, blankets, towels, and pillows. She made up the bed before tackling the closet and finding _clothing_ , honest-to-god _clothing_. She had never been so glad to find a plaid shirt in her entire life. With a bundle of plaid, sweatpants, and a towel, she headed back to the bathroom, barely waiting for the water to heat above lukewarm before she jumped in.

Darcy had had shower access in the Hydra facility. Better soap access there than here, too – she’d found exactly one bar of generic soap and one bottle of combined shampoo/conditioner, also generic, in her hunt through the bathroom cabinets – but this shower was taken without fear of interruption. _This_ shower was taken at her leisure, allowing her to actually _enjoy_ the process of getting clean. She hummed in pleasure and relief, happy to enjoy even this small comfort and reveling in it. Darcy scrubbed her skin till it turned red, knowing that she couldn’t _actually_ scrub her captivity away, but trying anyway. At first she’d thought to be more careful with her healing track marks, but then she realized that they were… gone. It was sort of strange, but she wasn’t actually certain _when_ during her captivity they’d appeared, and she’d always been a quick healer.

She was just stepping out of the shower when she realized that the warmth she was feeling wasn’t just from the joy of being clean. Darcy swayed, grabbing at the edge of the sink as a rush of heat swept her from head to toe, centering low in her belly.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” she breathed, reaching between her legs and finding slick there.

Her heat had started.


	4. in which no plan survives the battle of heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HERE BE THAT DUB-CON KNOTTING pr0n I WARNED YOU OF. YE BE WARNED.
> 
>  
> 
> *If you don't want to read the sex, you can basically just skip this chapter. The next one picks up right after Darcy comes out of her heat-haze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …you can pry my corny titles from my COLD, DEAD HANDS.

Darcy thoughtfully dropped a few of the blankets and one of the towels onto the couch in the living room before she holed herself up in the bedroom with three glasses of water and her fingers for comfort. This was going to suck, a lot. Omegas were, quite literally, _not made_ to get through their heats alone. Biology demanded another participant, demanded a sharing of hormones and – if at all possible – genetic material, and biology could be quite the bitch when thwarted. Darcy lay back on the bed and started cycling through possible fantasy material to get herself through the next several days. It would be best if she could hold off on masturbating as long as possible, if only so she could try and trick her body into thinking it was going to get what it wanted, but if she thought of wank-material _now_ then she might have less of a hard time trying to find some _later_.

There were, of course, the obvious options: celebrities, anyone from film stars to cultural heroes. She’d had some interesting thoughts about Tony Stark’s goatee before she’d started running in the circles of actual science geniuses – people who might know him. She had always made it a point not to masturbate to strangers she could conceivably _meet_ , it seemed creepy. That knocked Captain America off the list, too, she realized somewhat mournfully. He was pretty hot, even in the battle-mussed stills from the New York invasion.

Thoughts of battle brought her back to her recent memories, and Darcy thought, somewhat involuntarily, of Barnes. Barnes with his teeth bared and his eyes focused on a target, showing his throat to her to calm her down, saving her, protecting her on their journey through the belly of the Hydra facility. She thought of the scent he put out and felt a rush of wet between her legs.

“Shit,” she said, staring at the ceiling, “well, that makes this… complicated.”

Darcy spent the next half hour trying to think of a fantasy that _didn’t_ result in her brain rerouting it towards Barnes. No dice. It seemed like _all_ her old tried-and-true fancies brought him to mind. Thoughts of Ryan Gosling? Gee, they both kinda had kind of sad-looking eyes, didn’t they? That hot RA from Culver? He’d totally had a similar taciturn thing going on. The barista from that place in London? His lips reminded her of Barnes. Everyone reminded her of him, or came up short in comparison to him – it was a problem, a serious problem.

If this was what she was like _now_ , while still coherent, what would she be like tomorrow? Or the next day?

She smelled Barnes before she heard him, and if he’d smelled good when she was in pre-heat that was _nothing_ to what he smelled like now. She smelled his scent where it hadn’t been before and found herself climbing from the bed and standing in front of the bedroom door knowing, just _knowing_ , that he was standing on the other side.

“You’re back,” she said in her normal speaking voice. He could hear her, she was certain of it.

“Yes.”

“Were they all out of banana?” she joked weakly.

“No.”

Darcy leaned her forehead against the wood of the door and clasped her hands behind her back. “It’s worse than I thought it would be,” she admitted. “Can you – you shouldn’t open the door. Will you please leave the food outside the door and – “ _and then leave so I can open it?_ she finished in her head. “… Barnes?”

“I’m going to check the perimeter,” he said roughly. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

She waited almost ten before she opened the door.

…

Time passed.

She didn’t know how much.

She ate when hunger forced itself through her body’s other needs, drank water whenever she noticed the bottle on the bedside table. Her bathroom breaks were carefully timed to coincide with Barnes’s perimeter checks. She wasn’t sure what he was checking for, but she was glad that his thorough nature meant she didn’t have to test her bladder control. She’d made it almost six hours before the heat got to be too much and she’d finally had to touch herself. She’d barely gotten the tips of her fingers wet before Barnes was taking center stage in her fantasy, ousting her carefully-constructed scenario involving an unlikely meet-cute with young Antonio Banderas and insatiable lust. That had been one nap and several hours, and orgasms, prior and she had yet to successfully bring herself to completion with anything other than Barnes on her mind.

Every time he came to the door and said, “Fifteen minutes,” it was harder and harder not to call out to him. Darcy wasn’t even certain that if she _did_ call out, he would answer, but the temptation was there and it was strong, and it was only increasing as time went by.

She thought that it might have been a day? It was brighter out than it had been a few hours ago, which meant that it had been darker at one point. Darcy wasn’t sure. She wasn’t really certain of anything at that moment but the sheer, unrelieved _need_. She needed someone to hold her down and keep her _present_ and _there_ , in the moment. She needed someone to cuddle her and soothe her through the worst of these stupid shakes, brought on by hormones pinging through her bloodstream with no clear aim. She needed something, _someone_ , to rid her of this _heat_.

She needed teeth in her neck and a cock in her cunt.

Darcy rolled over and grabbed one of the heat-bars Barnes had helpfully provided. They were an odd cross between a nutrient bar and a candy bar: lots of vitamins to replace what was lost and a truly crazy caloric content. This one was chocolate, and so sticky-sweet that it made her teeth ache. She unwrapped it slowly, focusing on every individual motion that went into peeling the wrapper, pulling it down, biting, and chewing the bar. She let the taste sit heavy on her tongue until she started to get the urge to gag, then washed it down with half of a bottle of water.

Her whole body went tense and expectant as the potency of Barnes’s smell increased just the slightest bit. He was at the door again. Was it time for another perimeter check already? There was no clock in the room for her to check, no way for her to accurately tell the time beyond the slow rise and fall of the sun and Barnes’s perimeter checks.

“Fifteen minutes,” he called through the door, and then waited.

She knew that he was waiting for some sort of acknowledgement. He did this every time: either waited till she said his name, _then_ spoke, or told her how long he’d been away, and then waited as he was now. It was, she thought, his way of checking to make sure she was still at least a little okay, or at least lucid. She wasn’t sure what he’d done during the checks when she had been asleep, maybe he just didn’t check at all? All she knew was that every time it was a little harder to muster up the word, “Okay.” Every time, she was a little closer to incoherence, that film of hormones and instinct that would render her non-verbal just that smidge closer to enveloping her brain.

Darcy cleared her throat twice before she could call out a, “Thanks.”

She barely managed three minutes before she was bringing herself off: one hand between her legs, the other between her teeth in an attempt to keep from screaming his name and bringing him running back to the cabin.

…

Time passed.

She didn’t know how much.

She’d lost speech, and was barely hanging on to reason. Her body felt like one large ache, centered on her core. The bottle of water had migrated from the bedside table to the bed itself because otherwise she would forget that it was there, and at this point she was losing as much of what she drank to her _tears_ as she was to sweat and other bodily fluids. It _hurt_ , god, it hurt so much. All she could feel was the pain, the _ache_ , of her unfulfilled need. She’d spent the last few perimeter checks whimpering as quietly as she could. She was pretty sure she’d figured out what Barnes did when she slept: waited what he felt as an appropriate amount of time and then left for his check anyways. He was waiting longer, though. Each time she answered him with nothing but poorly stifled whines he lingered by the door just a tad longer.

She couldn’t _stand_ it! She didn’t remember it being this _bad_ last time. Admittedly, that was five years prior, but still. She’d been in almost the same circumstances: riding out her heat on her own with nothing but herself for company, but she didn’t think the toys actually made _that_ much of a difference.

Of course, last time her body hadn’t been through such a punishment immediately prior.

“Fifteen minutes,” Barnes called, his voice almost a growl.

She could practically _feel_ that growl, could so easily imagine it vibrating against her skin…

Darcy rolled over and buried her face in a pillow.

…

Time passed.

She didn’t know how much.

Someone was calling her name. She could hear it.

“Darcy, you need to answer me. You – you’re _cryin’_. I can hear you. _Darcy_.”

That voice… she knew that voice. It was warm and rich and _too far away…_ She pulled herself to the edge of the bed and, now that her attention had been drawn to it, she could feel the sticky-salty tacky wetness of tears on her face and neck, in her hair. There was a faint, continuous whine sounding throughout the room and, she realized with some surprise, it was coming from _her_. She tried to stand, but found her legs too wobbly to support her, instead she sort of _slid_ off the bed, landing with a soft _thump_.

“Darcy?! Darcy, I can’t – I just need to check – “

There was a click and a creak, and suddenly the room was filled with the scent of _Alpha_. Darcy’s mouth dropped open, the better to take it in: so strong she could almost _taste_ it, taste _him_. He was strong, and healthy, and young, and _oh_ , he could fix this, fix _her_.

Suddenly, there he was standing before her, worried blue eyes looking almost black with how blown his pupils were. He reached out towards her and she leaned into the touch, rubbing her cheek against his palm and sucking in the stronger scent at his pulse point as fast as she could. He drew back and she whined, why? Where was he going? _Why_ was he going? She tilted her head back, baring her throat as much as she could to show that she was receptive, that she _needed_ him.

“Darcy,” he choked out, and his hands were back: one threading through her hair while the other grasped her shoulder. “You said – you said – “

She hummed with pleasure at the feel of the Alpha’s hands on her skin, looking up at him with heavy-lidded eyes. She leaned her head against his grip on her hair, coming close to purring when he tightened his hold in response. Slowly, she arched her back, letting her feet slide further away and apart to balance her and – He went predator-still as a fresh wave of her scent hit him. His lips drew back and he bared his teeth, both hands clenching on her almost to the point of pain. She went limp in his grasp, whimpering quietly. The hand in her hair tightened again, tugging on her scalp till her head was tilted so far back that her neck positively _ached_.

“ _Darcy,_ ” he said, and his voice had gone guttural and low.

She moaned and then the next thing she knew she was on the bed with him standing over her. His hands were fisted at his sides, and, under her intense scrutiny, he took one step back, away from her and towards the door. She sat up so she was kneeling instead of sprawled and watched him carefully. He was tense, poised to leap for the door, but his nostrils were flared, his mouth still gaping open to catch the least trace of her scent. She turned her back on him, shivering at the soft growl that prompted, and leaned forward to brace her weight on her hands. Then she looked over her shoulder and let out a single, questioning whine.

He was on her in an instant: all heat and muscle and Alpha aggression, one hand going to her hip while the other dove back into her hair and grabbed hard. He was gentle for all his strength, moving her carefully, guiding her down from her hands to her elbows and then –

She heard the soft _zhrrr_ of a zipper.

She pushed back into him as hard as the grip on her hair would allow, canting her hips. She didn’t have long to wait before she felt the blunt head of his cock nudging up against her. She tried to shift, the better to guide it into its rightful place, but a snarl and a twist of her hair had her fighting to hold still, whimpering all the while. The hand, this one cooler than the one in her hair, went back to her hip and tenderly pushed her to arch her back more, to tilt her hips a little further. She held as motionless as she could, save for where he directed her, caught by his hold and _waiting_ for him to give her what she needed.

There was warmth all along her spine as his chest came to rest against her back. She bit back a dissatisfied whine at the feel of cloth instead of skin, but was soothed when she felt the bristle of stubble brush against the top of her spine, then _teeth_. Her stillness went from an act of rapidly diminishing will to instinct-enforced paralysis at the feel of his sharp teeth taking hold at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, right at the point on her neck where the flesh had gone red and hot – her body trying to highlight the fastest, easiest way to form a bond.

He broke skin at the same time he pushed his hips forward, both of the sensations twining and easing the ache she’d been enduring so long she couldn’t remember anything else. She moaned as he slid home, her heat easing his passage, but his sheer size stretching her all the same. _Alpha_ , she thought muzzily, trying to work her hips back to take more, faster. He bit her harder in reprimand, waiting till she stilled before he fed her more of his length. She shivered and shook until, at last, she had taken all of him and his hips were flush with her ass. She whimpered, adjusting, and he released her from his teeth long enough to lick the wound clean before he bit again.

Slowly, so slowly, he set a rhythm. Every time she tried to speed it, or wriggled too much, he tugged her hair or set his teeth and he _always_ stopped moving until she’d stilled. Eventually, she went limp in his grasp and accepted that he would set the pace. Her body was so primed that, between his teeth and his cock, it took only a minute before she was quivering and clenching around him. He growled softly around the flesh in his teeth, making her flesh break out in goosebumps at the feel of the vibrations against her skin. Another minute and she was coming again, small whines and gasps bubbling up from her almost continuously at that point.

He gave one more hard thrust, pressing deep inside, before he was sliding one hand from her hip to her belly and using the other’s grip on her hair to tug her over onto her side, pressing her close to him. Though she tried to hold as still as she could, she trembled all over because she could feel the start of his knot – the ultimate heat cure – beginning to swell. She gulped air and tried to not to cry her relief as it grew and grew, until she’d graduated from trembling to full-on spasms as it filled and pressed against the very seat of the ache, the emptiness, that had caused her so much distress.

His hand pressing hard on her middle was her only warning before she felt stream after stream of come shoot out to coat her insides. She wriggled in his arms, this time not caring when he growled his discontent or clenched his teeth in her neck: this was _perfect_ , exactly what she’d been needing, _craving_ , everything she’d been searching for without knowing a reason why.

Warm without being hot, full without being strained, eased and exhausted, Darcy relaxed back against her Alpha and drifted off into a well-earned rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOPS, MY FINGER SLIPPED ON THE POST BUTTON.
> 
> Actually, I'm just having a really shitty day and want to make SOMEBODY happy. Ugh.


	5. in which Darcy deals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are fabulous and I adore you. Thank you for all of the well-wishes!
> 
> There actually IS a real, actual-facts reason I'm posting this one early (and no, you're not getting another chapter tomorrow): work/family will be combining to make me super crazy busy tomorrow. Instead of making you wait until midnight on Sunday, or *le gasp* _Monday_ … here, have it a little early.

Darcy never fully recovered the memories of the next few days. That was pretty par for the course with trauma-bonding and, even though that hadn’t been Barnes’s intention, even though he had done everything he had done to try and _help_ her, the end result of his actions had, in many ways, lined up almost exactly with _his_ plans. Darcy had been scared, terrified, _terrorized_ for weeks prior to meeting Barnes. Then she had been witness to him killing a lot of people and gone on the run with him, all the while worried for her life, his, and the lives of those she loved who had been – and probably still _were_ \- living under surveillance. She had gone into a pure heat and Barnes had assuaged it only when she was deep in the throes of desperate need, exactly as _he_ had planned to. Where _he_ had intended to trauma-bond her, bind her to him as tightly as possible, Barnes had only tried to respect her wishes and keep her safe.

The result, the trauma-bond, was the same. The aftermath, however, was quite different.

She would never recover her memories of those days, but there was a haze. There was the most vague of feelings: it was a sense-memory comprised of Barnes’s smell mixing with hers and the feelings of _safety_ and _contentment_ , a satisfaction that was bone-deep and a certainty that all was right with the world that was somehow even _deeper_. Darcy might not remember, but she _knew_ that she was safe and cared for and that went farther towards fixing the damage that _he_ had caused than any words might have. It took days for her higher brain functions to rouse themselves from the stew of hormones and instinct, for her rationality to begin to reassert itself. The process was in some ways helped and in some ways hindered by her condition: Barnes kept her so content that there was no sense of danger or alarm to hasten the process, but his desire to ease and soothe also created the perfect environment for healing.

Still, all things considered, it can hardly be surprising that Darcy’s first action on waking _fully_ , for the first time in god-knew-how-long, was to quietly remove herself from the bed – the bed which her sensitive nose said she had _shared_ with Barnes for quite some time – and lock herself in the bathroom to quietly freak out.

Darcy stood before the bathroom mirror and steeled herself for a minute before slowly lowering the sheet she’d stolen from the bed and was using as a make-shift toga in order to take stock. There was quite a collection of bruises on her fair skin, mostly in the green and yellow range, some with little hints of purple in the middle, but all well on their way to being healed. _Probably all from when I was in heat,_ she noted to herself, trying to adopt a clinical manner. Most of them were small and clearly caused by fingers, most notably the ones clustered at her hips and, she turned, on the meat of her ass and upper thighs. There were some larger bruises, too, and these were definitely from a _mouth_ and not _fingers_ but she skirted over the handful that dotted her belly and upper chest in favor of the one that mattered, the one on her _neck_.

“Fuck,” she breathed out so quietly it was barely an exhalation. There, on her neck, already _well_ on its way to healing, was a bite. She tilted her head to one side and poked it gently, scowling at herself in the mirror when her flesh went up in tingles and goosebumps at the sensation. The bite was large, well formed and clearly well cared for. It was also _clearly_ a bonding bite.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Darcy said again, a little louder, and then, “fuck,” a third time. “He bonded me. We _bonded_.”

She prodded around in her head and yeah, there it was, curled up in the back of her brain: the bond. It wasn’t like she could _feel him_ , she hadn’t somehow developed psychic powers overnight, it was more as if her brain had reorganized without her say-so and suddenly Barnes was just _there_ taking up space and attention the way only an Alpha could. She was freaking out and normally, _prior to bonding_ , her first response to her own freak out would have been to bitch to a friend (usually Jane, lately) or call her father or maybe bake something. _Post-bonding_ what she most wanted to do to calm herself down was find Barnes and crawl into his lap because she trusted, no, she _knew_ that he would help her find a way to make it all better.

“Fuck,” Darcy gasped, grabbing the sink and bracing herself against it. “Not good. This is. This is the opposite of good.” She couldn’t even really get mad at him for bonding with her in the first place. He had – she glanced down at herself again, noting that, in spite of the fact that she was _certain_ she hadn’t showered since her heat started, she was clean – he had taken really good care of her. He had, she recalled, _tried_ to leave her alone… and none of these justifications would have worked prior to her heat, her _bonding_. Darcy was incredibly conflicted. She had gone into heat unbonded, _not_ wanting to bond. She had come out of her heat bonded and, while she was freaking out about the repercussions, the inevitable _fall out_ of being bound to someone as dangerous as Barnes, she wasn’t as upset as she wanted to be, as she thought she _should_ be and that, more than anything else, was what was freaking her out.

“I’m upset that I’m not more upset,” she said to herself, edging around the sink to close the toilet lid and sit on it. “Because,” she said to herself, leaning forward to rest her forehead on her knees, “I don’t know how much of the not-upset is because he’s not actually a dick, and how much is because of what _that dick_ did to me before the rescue.”

Regardless, she could fully, _easily_ acknowledge that where she was now: bound to a strange, extremely quiet, extremely _dangerous_ Alpha who had been oddly invested in her well-being _before_ they were bonded, was _miles_ better than she would have been had she stayed stuck in that facility. With _him_. Darcy could also acknowledge that she was rationalizing and trying (not very successfully) to make the best of a bad – and incredibly fucked up – situation.

She huffed out a sigh, trying to choke off the faint whine that wanted to rise up her throat alongside it. Darcy was utterly unsurprised to hear the door click, then swing open, or to see two bare feet enter her field of vision, just to one side of her knees.

“Hi, Barnes,” she said. It was, she realized after a moment, probably the first coherent thing she’d said to him in… a while.

_How long was I out of it?_ she wondered. She had to have been missed by _now_.

She stilled as she felt fingers slide under the braid - _I wonder when he braided it again?_ \- at the base of her neck to curl just over the knobby start of her spine. Darcy bit her lip and then gave in and allowed herself to arch up, into the touch. There was the very faint sound of cloth moving and the feel of air puffing against her skin and she knew, somehow without looking, that he had crouched down beside her. It took only the lightest of tugs for him to gently guide her off of the toilet and down onto the floor, into his arms. She ended up resting against his chest, her face pressed into the crook of his neck, with both her arms curling over his shoulders.

After a minute or so she lifted her face away from his skin enough to say, “So. Bonded.”

“I’m…sorry?”

_That_ roused her enough so that she pulled away to see his face. Darcy wasn’t sure if it was that they were bonded, or several days in his company (she might not fully remember, but the experience had to have been squirreled away in _some_ portion of her hormone-addled brain), but she had a much easier time reading his expression now than she had had before. He looked a bit like she felt: conflicted.

Her lips quirked a little, because if she had to guess: “Are you sorry that you’re… not sorry?”

He didn’t answer – which, she felt, was kind of an answer in and of itself – instead he frowned and said, “It wasn’t smart. I’m… not safe.”

“I’m safer with you than I was stuck in that base,” she couldn’t help but point out, and then mentally kicked herself because she was _playing Devil’s Advocate_ for the bondmate she _hadn’t wanted to have_ while they discussed _their bonding_. “I mean, the plans they had for me,” she couldn’t actually finish that thought. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but when she tried to get the words out a whine came up instead.

Instantly he was using the hand he had kept in her hair to steer her face back to his neck.

Darcy took a few deep breaths of his scent, simultaneously comforted by it and _freaked out_ by how comforted by it she was.

“What were they planning?” he asked, and his voice was a touch more _growly_ than it had been a moment before.

She opened her mouth to tell Barnes about _him_ and, again, nothing but a whine came out. She tried again and ended up whimpering, her fingers clenching on his skin as she tried to anchor herself to the here-and-now, rather than get caught back up in the fear she had felt stuck _there_ with _him_ and _knowing_ what he had in store for her and everyone she cared for.

“Shh…shh… s’alright, just shh.”

Darcy tried not to laugh when she realized that Barnes was petting her hair. It was sort of awkward and, though she would never have admitted it out loud, kind of working. “I can’t,” she finally got out after another dozen or so soothing strokes. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it right now.” She felt him nod against her hair.

“Soon as you can though. I… I need to know.”

It was her turn to nod and then she was relaxing against him, falling almost into a doze under the comforting and repetitive motions of his hand. “Barnes?” she said after she’d calmed down – which involved a lot of repressing, stuffing _him_ and everything _he’d_ done into a tiny box in the recesses of her mind – “Not that I’m objecting but you’re… talking more?”

He huffed out a breath that was not quite a laugh. “I suppose I’ve got more to say.”

That was… not really an answer, but she mentally shrugged, going with it. “What are we going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. I’ll keep you safe.”

When he’d said it before they’d bonded, she’d believed him.

Now?

Darcy nuzzled her face into his neck and breathed in Alpha, _her_ Alpha. “Okay.”


	6. in which there are some clues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that if I could get 5,000 more words of this fic written today, I would post again.
> 
> GUESS WHAT, GUYS?

Now that she was lucid, Barnes started getting ready to move them.

“We’ve been here too long,” he told her. “We shouldn’t stay in one place.”

She nodded, opened her mouth and then shut it instead of voicing her desire to contact her friends and family again. She hadn’t mentioned them since before her heat, but the reasoning for _not_ contacting them was, if anything, even more true now than it had been before. Darcy frowned though, because while that was true, it was also true that – “We need some sort of long-term plan,” she said. “We can’t hide forever, _I_ can’t hide forever, I’m just not – not built for that sort of thing.”

Barnes stopped bundling up their bedding – she wasn’t sure what he planned to do with it, but she doubted washing was on the agenda – to look at her. “I know,” he said, “it’s just for a little while. Can you manage a few months?”

“ _Months?_ ” she squeaked. “I – Barnes, I don’t – “

He crossed the room quickly wrapping his arms around her in yet another display of the way their respective space bubbles had completely disappeared since bonding. “A few months,” he repeated. “In a few months things will have… settled. I can take stock, contact some people, figure out the lay of the land. Please just… trust me. I can keep us safe.”

“I – “ she tried to muster up some sort of objection but found herself nodding instead. “Okay,” she breathed out, “we’ll try it your way for a little while. I guess,” she said, smiling a little lopsidedly, “the same people who’re looking for a lone, scared Omega won’t look twice at a bonded one with a big, scary Alpha.”

He froze and she could feel the tension in him. “Darcy… the people who’re looking for you – they’ll be looking for me, too. Harder, probably.”

“Well,” she adopted a cheery tone, “the same people who’re looking for a big, scary Alpha won’t be looking for a newly bonded one. Right?”

Barnes leaned away to look her in the eyes, one hand coming up to cup her cheek. “No,” he said softly, “they won’t. They’d never think - _I_ never woulda thought…” He shook his head abruptly and stepped away, turning back to the bedding and leaving her feeling a touch bereft. Darcy had a moment in which she wondered why his accent had shifted – was shifting? – before he asked her to gather what was left of the heat-snacks and the inconsistency was dashed from her thoughts.

…

They left that night, and Barnes drove them all the way to Oregon before they stopped for more than gas. By that point, she had worked herself up to demanding food: she’d been subsisting on heat-snacks, water, and Gatorade for almost a week - finding out that she’d lost _five days_ to her heat haze hadn’t exactly done her composure any favors – and she was about ready to trade her left arm for a semi-decent _hot_ meal. She was surprised when he acquiesced without much argument, and in return _she_ didn’t object to his desire to scope out the small diner he found before escorting her in. It was a seat-yourself place, so Darcy gamely followed Barnes to a small corner booth and then watched him struggle with himself over something. Finally, she rolled her eyes and moved to settle in, but his hand on her arm stopped her.

“Can you – “ He sighed and tugged a little till she was standing again, then nodded toward the other side of the booth. She raised her eyebrows at him, startled that he wanted _her_ sitting with her back to the wall, but - “Please,” he said.

She sat, and was then monumentally _un_ surprised when he nudged her over and sat beside her. It made sense then, in a hyper vigilant, hyper _protective_ sort of Alpha way. Darcy would have liked to have said that it was doing nothing for her, but rather than feeling closed in it made her feel incredibly safe to know that he was between her and the outside – even if the ‘outside’ was just a semi-deserted diner on the outskirts of Portland. Darcy decided to stop dissecting her own feelings and reactions and start looking at _his_. His were probably more interesting, and less complicated, at least.

Barnes was rigid to the point of nearly _vibrating_ when the waiter walked up and addressed them. Their waiter was young, probably still in high school, a Beta, and the most painfully Hipsterific person Darcy had seen outside of an indie film. He was also completely terrified of Barnes if his smell was anywhere near accurate. Darcy almost expected Barnes to be smug, inspiring such a reaction, but it didn’t even seem to register. His eyes were continuously skimming the restaurant, cataloguing every sound, smell, and sight while Darcy smiled at the poor boy and tried to set him at ease.

“Wh-what will you be having tonight?” the kid stuttered, clearly trying to be polite and attentive towards Darcy and also _just_ as clearly unable to take his terrified eyes off of Barnes.

“I’ll have your pancake special,” she said, because _every_ place like this had some sort of pancake special, “and the…” She wanted coffee, _god_ did she want coffee, but she hadn’t had any for over a month and detoxing in Hydra’s tender care had sucked – she didn’t think she was in a position to feed that particular habit if she picked it back up. “I’ll have the orange juice,” she sighed.

“Same,” Barnes said shortly.

“Right, I’ll just go. Put that order in, I mean! Thanks.” Hipsterific fairly _dashed_ away.

Darcy was not sure whether to be amused or disturbed. “You know,” she started, “your, ah, _friendly_ disposition is pretty _noticeable_ \- “

If anything, her comment seemed to make Barnes go even _more_ stiff. She hadn’t thought that was possible.

“Just… maybe try and smile?”

He turned his head towards her and then smiled. It showed all of his teeth and didn’t even _touch_ his eyes.

“Nevermind,” she said. “That’s… not actually better.”

Barnes nodded and turned back to his watch.

Darcy dropped any idea of conversation and settled back to watch him while he watched the restaurant. After a minute or so of this, she got bored. “Barnes,” she said, nudging him gently with her elbow. He didn’t turn towards her, but she felt his focus shift all the same. “Could you pass me one of the papers from that table?” He was up, over, grabbing one, and back in one smooth motion that took him from her side for _maybe_ a fraction of a second. “Thanks,” she said, absently patting his shoulder as she skimmed the headlines.

 **MORE REVELATIONS OF SHIELD CORRUPTION!** received top billing, closely followed by, **Captain America to make full recovery.**

“Barnes,” Darcy said slowly, “what the hell _happened?_ ”

He glanced over at the paper, read the headline, and then his face flitted through so many expressions so quickly that she couldn’t parse it. “Read,” he said tersely, “I’ll fill in for you what I can, after. There’re some things…” He shook his head, “I can’t tell you all of it. Read.”

“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word until it was almost its own sentence. Darcy watched him a little longer, trying to figure out his very strong, very _complicated_ reaction to the paper, before she noticed that the muscles at the corner of his jaw were jumping and flexing. Instead of questioning him further, she scooted over until they were pressed together from knee to shoulder and spread the paper open over the table.

The information was overwhelming at first, until she realized well over half of it was speculation. Reading between the lines, she figured out that, while she’d been ‘underground’ (inside a cement cube in a Hydra facility) and ‘out’ (of control in a heat frenzy) the world had shifted. SHIELD, good ol’ SHIELD of the iPod stealing agents and the alien repelling, nuke-slinging, superheroes, had been infiltrated by Hydra… almost from the beginning. She stared at the page, assimilating that fact and – oh. Oh _god_. If SHIELD and Hydra were the same, then the surveillance she’d been under, the people who’d _grabbed_ her –

There was an arm around her, a hand squeezing her shoulder, and a gruff voice in her ear asking if she was all right.

“My – my family! And Jane,” she squeaked out, “if Hydra – and _SHIELD!_ But she’s – I have to call her!”

“It’s not safe.”

“But if Hydra is out in the open, then – “

“Cut off one head,” he reminded her, lip curling into an almost-snarl.

She blinked, then felt ice slide down her spine as she realized: “If Hydra was under SHIELD’s noses this whole time, then there’s no knowing how far they’ve spread. There’s no way they’ve _all_ been rooted out. They could be _anywhere_.” She gulped, suddenly his vigilance was looking less overdone and more _completely necessary_. “Barnes,” she whispered, keeping her voice low to prevent it shaking. “Barnes, what are we going to _do?_ ”

“Plan hasn’t changed, Darcy.”

“What do you _mean_ the plan hasn’t – “ she blinked as the pieces clicked together. “You couldn’t tell me everything,” she said, “which means you know _more_ than what’s in the papers. Or you think you do. And you found me in that place, but you weren’t _looking_ , so you already knew they were _there_ and you were looking to take them – “

Barnes gently but firmly clamped his hand at the back of her neck, instantly quieting her, only moments before their waiter returned, bearing their food. “Hi,” Hipsterific said, slightly more composed than he’d been when he’d taken their order. “So, we’ve got two Pancakehole Specials and two OJs, here you go!” He slid them onto the table and stood back, smiling. “Anything else I can get you two?”

“No.”

“Okay then,” his smile was slightly dimmed but not _completely_ gone, not even under Barnes’s gimlet stare. Darcy gave the kid major points for that. “I’ll be back in a few to check on you. Enjoy your meals!” This time he didn’t run away, but he definitely at least scurried.

Darcy watched Barnes, who was watching their server walk away. Once Hipsterific was safely in the kitchen, he turned to her and frowned. “Eat,” he said, thumb starting up a slow, steady stroke along the side of her neck. “Eat, and I’ll explain,” he elaborated a few moments later, once it became clear that she wasn’t going to move until he said _something_.

She nodded and turned to her – holy shit! - _huge_ stack of pancakes, sausage, and bacon. Literally all stacked together. She blinked at it for a moment, then shrugged and dumped syrup on the side for dipping and dug in. Hot, fresh food was a freaking _delight_ and she sighed happily over her fluffy, fluffy pancakes and crispy, crispy bacon, _almost_ forgetting that –

“You’re right. I knew the base was there. I planned my… attack,” Barnes began. “I was there. At the river. When – “ he gave a wordless shrug that, she supposed, was meant to communicate _when Hydra came to light_ and _when three Helicarriers fell over the Potomac_ and _when Captain America nearly went to the grave for real this time._ “After… I knew they’d be scattered, reorganizing. I knew where the base was, I hit it, and – you were there.”

“And the rest is history?”

He shrugged and then nudged her towards her food again.

Darcy took a bite of bacon, chewed, swallowed, then, “How did you know the base was there? Were you SHIELD?”

“No,” he said, something dark behind his eyes. His hand on her neck tensed a little, but she didn’t think it was on purpose.

“Hydra?” she asked, softer. She had no clue what she’d do if the answer was _yes._

“No,” he said again, though hesitantly. “Not by choice.” His gaze seemed to shift to something, some _where_ internal and his grip on her neck pulled her over, closer, till she was curled against his chest. Again, she didn’t think he was aware of what he was doing. The clinical part of her noted that with some relief since that meant she wasn’t the only one being affected by their bond, but it made her less clinical self want to coo and clutch him close to calm down whatever storm had arisen in his memory. When he spoke again, his voice had gone rough with the edges of a growl: “They had me a lot longer than 23 days.”

Darcy rubbed her cheek against his shirt. “They don’t have you anymore.”

“No.” Barnes’s hands tugged her closer again and he dipped his face into her hair, breathing deeply. “Guess not.” He held her close for a moment or two more, then pushed her back towards her plate: “Eat, Darcy.”

She nodded and then pointed at his (untouched) plate with a meaningful look. “You too.” He nodded and, for a little while, they sat in silence and ate. Barnes used peanut butter on his pancakes, she noted with some amusement. “Not enough protein on your pancakes?” she asked, a trifle teasingly.

He side-eyed her plate and flicked a peanut butter packet at her. “You need more protein, too.”

“I, good sir, could actually stand to lose – “ she stopped, biting her lip (healed now, thank goodness), and remembering her time with Hydra. “Well,” she amended, trying to keep her tone light and airy, “I _could_ have stood to lose a few. Before. I guess I should focus on maintaining now.”

Barnes shook his head. “Gaining,” he corrected.

Darcy blinked, torn between very irrational pleasure and much more reasoned annoyance. She split the difference with a, “Why don’t you let me worry about my own aesthetics.”

That brought him up short. He set his fork down on his plate and turned to her, giving her a very _thorough_ once-over. “I promise,” he said in a low voice that was _completely new, holy cats, where did that come from_ , “your _aesthetics_ aren’t anything you need to worry over, Darcy.”

“I, um.” She cleared her throat and then scowled when she saw the way his eyes were crinkling at the corners. “Shut up and eat your pancakes,” she muttered. “And, anyways, I had more questions – “ she noticed the way his shoulders hunched a little and quickly changed the course of her sentence. “What can you tell me about the facility they were keeping me in?”

Barnes sat up a little straighter. “Larger base, probably housed a decent amount of core Intel – “

“Probably?”

He shrugged, “My priorities shifted after I found you. Besides, dead men can’t use Intel. They could replace any information I took easily enough, I’m sure they’ve got back-ups. People and equipment are much harder to duplicate.”

“Ah.”

“Does that… bother you? What I did?”

It was Darcy’s turn to set down her fork and study _him_. “Am I bothered,” she asked quietly, “that you killed all of the sons of bitches that kidnapped me? The _assholes_ who’ve been keeping everyone I love under surveillance? The _shitstains_ that put god-knows-what in me when they knocked me out, who starved me and kept me sleep-deprived? The ones who were gonna – “ she coughed, she still couldn’t say it, couldn’t bring up _him_.

“I’m gonna take that as a ‘no.’”

“Your intuition is amazing,” she muttered, stabbing viciously at her last remaining piece of sausage.

“You got any other questions?”

“You keep,” she paused, trying to think of how to phrase it. “You keep _shifting_. Your accent, um. Some of your mannerisms? I mean, I assume some of it is because – “ she gestured towards her neck and tried, probably unsuccessfully, not to blush when his eyes zeroed in on her neck. “But, I mean, some of it seems like it can’t be explained by that. So. Why?”

“Like I said, they had me for… a long time. Guess I’m… wakin’ up. It’s a process.”

“A process, huh?” Darcy thought that over, then decided to take it at face value. “You let me know how that goes.”

“I promise you’ll be the first to know,” he said, eyes doing that crinkle-thing again.

She nodded primly and went back to her food. She was _starving_.

…

They drove for another several hours after their meal. By that point Darcy had given up on tracking where they were going, instead occupying herself with the handful of newspapers she’d convinced Barnes to buy at a gas station. She read and thought, thought and read, until eventually he handed her a spiral-bound notebook and a pack of pens after yet _another_ stop. With an outlet, she read, thought, wrote, and started asking more questions. She didn’t venture into topics she thought would make him uncomfortable, or upset, she stuck to the edges of things while she tried to put together a complete picture of the events that had gone down while she was in Hydra’s clutches.

Darcy waited to lay out her theories until they’d reached their next stop, a super shady-looking motel that she suspected they were only staying at for _her_. Barnes looked like he could drive for another few days, easily, so this must be for her benefit. She didn’t have to heart to tell him she would have rather driven another few hours to find some place they could actually _settle_ in for a bit. Although the shower sounded nice.

“So,” she said once Barnes had finished his (first) perimeter check, “Hydra and SHIELD.”

He raised an eyebrow in mute inquiry, moving across the room and settling beside her where she sat with her back propped up against the headboard.

She wiggled a little to lean against him, drawing her knees up and setting her notebook full of scribbles against them. “If they were the same, and I’m not doubting that they were, then why grab me? They said they wanted me to get to Thor and Jane, but Thor will totally answer any and all questions anyone has _anytime_ they ask him, and usually in exhaustive, extremely graphic and vivid detail. Honestly, the problem is keeping him on track, a lot of the time. Plus, he has no beef with SHIELD. And Jane… honestly, if they’d ever offered funding, she probably would have _leapt_ at the chance, but they’ve had her twisting in the wind. I don’t get it.”

“They probably wanted an agent inside before they offered funding.”

“That… okay, yeah, I guess that makes sense. I guess I’m caught up over the whole, why go Hydra with it? They could have gotten the same results with SHIELD and honesty.”

“Liars rarely trust others to be honest,” Barnes pointed out, sliding his arm around her shoulders.

“I… alright. I can see that. Just – “ she huffed, tapping her pen against the paper. “I wish I knew why _me._ Why _now._ How did I draw – did I do something? To get their attention?” She snorted, and her tone was more than a little bitter when she said, “If I know what I did then maybe I can make sure to _never do it again_.”

He slid his other arm down to curl under her knees and drew her over and fully into his lap, tucking her head under his chin.

“Well. This helps,” Darcy muttered, trying and failing to avoid being _completely soothed_ by his arms around her. “I mean, they’d have to go above and beyond to get me bound to one of their agents _now_.”

She felt as Barnes’s whole body went loose and relaxed and it was somehow 1,000x more alarming than seeing him go still. “What.”

“That was what they had planned,” she said. She could explain if she did it in short sentences and didn’t try and talk about _him_. “They took me. They drugged me. Starved me. Kept me awake. They… trauma-bond. They were gonna trauma-bond me.” Darcy was quivering all over, little tremors from remembered fear, so she turned her head and buried her nose in the hollow of Barnes’s throat, breathing in as deeply as she could. “But hey,” she said after several deep breaths, “it takes a lot of trouble to break a bond. I mean, they’d have to k-kill you, or use a fuckload of drugs, or… g-get me p-pregnant with _his_ ,” she was gasping by the end, a whimper crawling up the back of her throat.

Barnes rolled to get her under him, pinning her to the bed and setting his mouth against the unmarked side of her neck. “No,” he growled, and she could feel the sound rumbling from his body to hers. “ _No_ , never.” Darcy whined, curving her neck till the bonding bite – almost completely healed at that point, which was _fast_ for her, but she knew those were supposed to heal quickly – was tilted towards him. He immediately set his teeth in and bit down, drawing another whine from her as she went limp.

He held her down, and still, until her heart quit racing.

“Sorry,” Darcy whispered after a few minutes. “I… sorry.”

He detached his teeth from her skin and licked at the blood that had welled up. “You don’t have to be sorry. You never have to be sorry for needing me.”

“Yeah, well.” She stared at the ceiling and tried not to blush. “This whole bonding thing is pretty new to me.” Barnes went still above her, prompting her to look down from the ceiling to his face. His eyes had gone wide and his mouth thin and pinched. “What? What’s wrong?”

“ _I_ forced a bond on you,” he said flatly.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, “yeah, you did.”

He started to draw away.

“But,” she started, both hands coming up to grab his shoulders, “you’ve been… son of a bitch.” She dropped her head back down to stare at the ceiling again. “There really isn’t any way to say this that doesn’t sound… kind of awful, so. Yeah, you forced a bond on me, but. Well. You were also under the effect of _my_ heat hormones: you weren’t exactly in your right mind, either. Plus you’ve – you’ve been taking care of me,” she said softly. “I’ve done some reading on trauma-bonds, or I did before I ever thought they’d be relevant _to my life_ and I’m a lot more… in my own head? _Coherent_ than I should be. Would be?” She sighed, “I am _way_ better off here, unexpectedly bonded with you, on the run from _Hydra_ than I would be if you hadn’t found me. I mean. I wouldn’t have chosen to jump into a bond with you like this but, um, it could be worse? I’m glad it’s you? Crap, I _told you_ there was no good way to say this!”

He’d gradually relaxed and stopped trying to move away while she spoke, and now he was watching her with a curious sort of expression on his face. “You’re right,” he told her, “that sounded awful. True, but awful.” One side of his mouth quirked up in a little grin, “But apparently I’m _not_ a fate worse than Hydra, so…”

“Yay?” she offered.

“Yay,” he said solemnly.

“Okay, then.” She stared up at him, firmly shoving all thoughts about their continued proximity to one side (the dark side) of her brain. “So. Sleep. We should do that. You need some so you can drive.”

“Not so much as you’d think,” he said, moving to one side of her instead of remaining _on top of her_. “I… can take the floor?”

“No,” she said immediately. “I mean, not unless you want to.”

He shook his head, “My ma didn’t raise any fools. Sharing is fine by me.”

“Right, so…” Darcy flashed him a small, awkward smile and slid off the bed for the restroom.

What followed was a simple nighttime routine that was only strange for Darcy in how _normal_ it all felt. She brushed her teeth, stripped back down to the oversized t-shirt she’d worn when they vacated the Hydra base – it had been washed since – and settled down in bed. Barnes did the same, wrapping his arms around her and settling them both on their sides so he could play big spoon almost as soon as he’d slid into the bed. She considered objecting for about a microsecond but, well, she didn’t really _want_ to object: he made an _excellent_ big spoon.


	7. in which Darcy connects the dots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed another 5,000 words today (WHY YES THAT DOES MAKE OVER 11,000 WORDS IN TWO DAYS, THANK YOU FOR ASKING) so, here, have another chapter. As always, you continue to be fucking fabulous, and I love you. Feel free to come join my insanity on tumblr, which I just remembered existed: same amuse name, same amuse insanity.

They spent the next few days following the same sort of pattern: drive until Barnes found an appropriately small, shady, or out of the way motel; stop for gas and healthy snacks (if possible) when necessary; one stop per day to get a hot meal, usually dinner, and that stop was the only time that Darcy got out of the car to interact with other people. This was an odd mix of Barnes’s preference and her own, to be honest. It wasn’t that he objected to her getting out of the car, he just got a little tenser, a little more watchful when she did. It was worse when there were other people outside the stations, and he got downright twitchy – or his version of twitchy, which was a coiled tension that Darcy had visceral memories of from the Hydra base – if anyone got too close. “Too close” could range from ten feet to within a mile, it seemed, based on some strange formula that Barnes didn’t seem too keen to share. On her end, the reluctance to interact stemmed from Omega nesting instincts and her new Alpha. She was aware of this, she owned it, but she didn’t really see a reason to go against them, yet.

Under normal circumstances, couples (or triads, or foursomes, or moresomes) took time to settle their new bonds and adjust to their rewired instinctual responses. These weren’t normal circumstances, though – and that might have been the greatest understatement she’d ever made in her life. Darcy really didn’t mind his reluctance, so long as she got that once-a-day diner stop. Today, several days into their impromptu road trip, they’d stopped for a bit longer to launder what clothing they had before heading to the diner. She wasn’t actually sure where Barnes was procuring funds from and she didn’t particularly want to ask. She was fine with what he’d managed to grab, although they did collectively look somewhat like bums, wearing their road stop chic.

Darcy had expected her jeans to at least stand up a little longer without washing, but they smelled a bit off to her – muskier, maybe? Probably from all the time cooped up in the car – so she chucked them in with the rest of the clothes and grabbed some sweatpants instead. They were going to the town diner, after all, and wouldn’t be there long enough for her to care about any negative opinions they inspired.

“Ready?” Barnes asked.

“Uh-huh,” she nodded. “You sure nobody will take our stuff?”

He shrugged, then grabbed a clean sock and rubbed it over his neck before dropping it on top of the washing machine.

“Well… yeah, I guess that’ll do it,” she said, biting her lip to keep in a laugh.

“Ready?” he asked again.

“Okay, lets go.”

The diner in _this_ particular town – she didn’t know the name, didn’t really care, either – was a bit smaller than the last one. It was a more a trucker diner than a local pit stop, clearly. It made sense: there were several large highways going by this place, and it was close to an entrance to the toll roads, too. The place was called “Sal’s” and the décor was very... peachy. _Everything_ was done up in shades of peach, save for the occasional splash of aqua. It made Darcy feel like she was inside of a very dull traffic cone.

Their waitress was a middle-aged Omega woman with bright green eyeliner and a warm smile. “What can I getcha, kids?”

“Burger special?” Darcy questioned. She’d been craving protein lately, but she wasn’t about to stoop to Barnes’s level and put _peanut butter_ on _pancakes_.

“Which one?”

“Um, whichever,” she shrugged.

The waitress gave her a considering look, then shrugged. “I’ll getcha the Boondock Special, and you let me know, hon, if there’s anything that doesn’t sit right with you. We can getcha somethin’ else.”

“Thank you?” Darcy said, a little startled.

Their waitress, ‘Elsa’ – according to her nametag, nodded and turned to Barnes. “And you?”

“One of the other burger specials,” he instructed. “And a salad.”

“’Course. Coming right up, kids.”

Darcy watched the other woman walk away with a frown on her face. “That was weird.”

Barnes shrugged. He was in his uber-protective mode, which tended to dial down his speech mode.

“You don’t think that was weird? You think _everything’s_ weird!”

“She just seems like she’s good at her job.”

Darcy squinted at him, but he was watching the door. After a moment she sighed and grabbed for a paper to catch up on the current events. If Barnes didn’t think there was anything amiss, then it was probably okay. Just… strange. The burgers, when they came out, were juicy, delicious, and _perfect_. Darcy hummed happily with each bite, devouring hers in record time. Barnes ended up splitting his focus between watching the restaurant and watching her, looking distinctly amused in a Barnes-ish sort of way.

“Want a milkshake?” he asked, after she had demolished her fries, a few of his, and half his salad.

“Ooh… milkshakes! Do you think they have strawberry?” she asked eagerly. “Actually, hold that thought. Or, wait, you can ask while I go to the bathroom.” She grinned and nodded, nudging him so he’d get out of the booth… and coming up against nothing but hard muscle when he refused to budge. Darcy sighed. This was their single bone of contention with the diner stops: bathroom breaks.

The problem was this: she didn’t think she needed him to sit outside while she did her business. He did.

“Seriously? Again with this? C’mon, Barnes, lemme out.”

“Darcy…”

“I’ll be _fine_ , I just have to pee!”

“ _Darcy…_ ”

“Barnes!” She leaned into his ear to hiss, “You making a fuss is making _this_ a bigger deal than me _going to the bathroom unescorted._ I will be _fine_.”

His jaw clenched so hard that the muscles at the hinge went paler than normal, but he gave a short nod and slid out of the booth. She felt his eyes on the back of her head during the entire walk to the restroom. Even though she _genuinely_ thought his concern was silly and misplaced, she found herself hustling through her bathroom routine as quickly as possible to get out. She stopped short at the picture he made when she exited the bathroom: he’d returned to crazy-vigilant mode and she could see even from where she was that he’d gone completely rigid in his seat, eyes never stopping on one thing for longer than a fraction of a second as he continuously scanned the area.

Elsa drew up next to her, chuckling. “Your first?” she asked, nodding and making a brief hand gesture towards her stomach.

"Huh?"

"Alphas are always so much worse with the first baby,” she said, clearly nostalgic. “My Jeannie almost ripped a poor man's head off for giving me a good morning when I was pregnant with my first. Cut your young man some slack, he'll calm down eventually." 

Darcy shot from shock to beyond it so quickly that she ended up in that weird, floaty space where nothing could touch you before her scent could shift to reflect any sort of inner turmoil. "… Thank you. I'll try and keep that in mind.”

“You do that,” Elsa nodded, “he seems like a good one.”

She was pretty sure she smiled, or made some other appropriate reaction, because the waitress nodded and moved on. Meanwhile, Darcy’s brain was on a single track, a loop going round and round and round, unstoppable and spinning ever faster: _I’m pregnant._ Of course, they hadn’t used protection during her heat, had they? _I’m pregnant._ It explained how hungry she was. _I’m pregnant._ That was probably why the nesting instincts were hitting her so hard. _I’m pregnant._ Her jeans had smelled off to her because her base scent was changing. _I’m pregnant._

She walked back to their table in a daze. _I’m pregnant._ She didn’t even really taste the milkshake he’d ordered for her. _I’m pregnant._ She silently followed him out of the diner to the car, watching the scenery go by on the way back to the laundromat and never saying a word. _I’m pregnant._ She toyed with a single sock as they pulled up to the motel, for once letting Barnes grab the bag and hold the door for her with no commentary. _I’m pregnant._ She sat on the bed and nodded when Barnes told her he was going to run a quick perimeter check, waiting till he’d shut the door to flop backwards on the bed, hands coming up to rest on her still-flat stomach, framing her bellybutton. _I’m **pregnant.**_

Then: _He knew._


	8. in which many revelations are had

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm SUPER behind on responding to reviews, and I am sorry for that (I WILL GET TO ALL OF THEM), but hopefully this sort of makes up for it?

She was still lying there when Barnes came back. “So,” she said as she heard him shut the door. “I’m pregnant.”

“I know.”

That made her prop herself up on her elbows. “I _know_ that you know! Why didn’t you _say anything?_ ”

His eyes narrowed. “You,” he said slowly, as if testing the words, “ _didn’t_ know?”

Darcy stared at him incredulously. “ _How would I know that?_ ”

He moved away from the door, but didn’t join her on the bed. “Smell?” he suggested, as if it was a trick question and he was still trying to figure out where the trap lay. Barnes moved to one side of the bed, grabbed their basket of laundry, and started folding up their motley collection of clothing – he even folded their _underwear._ It was _not_ endearing. At all.

“I’ve never really spent any length of time around a pregnant Omega! Why would I recognize that smell?”

“How could I know that you _wouldn’t_ recognize it?” he countered a little defensively.

“But – you – “ she tried to grab words, something to yell at him over, but if he _didn’t know_ that she didn’t know… “Ugh,” she groaned, slumping back down on the bed and pressing her knuckles against her eyes. “I’m pregnant. Oh my god, _I’m pregnant._ Barnes, what the hell? What are we going to _do?!_ ” She heard cloth shifting, and then felt a warm hand – not skin-warm, probably his metal hand – on her shoulder.

“You really didn’t know?”

“Honestly? I had no _clue_. I just – a _baby?!_ We’re on the run! We bonded by accident! They were dousing me with some sort of chemical cocktail and what if it – what if the _baby -_ “ Her words were momentarily cut off when Barnes hauled her over and into his lap, sliding up the bed till his back rested against the headboard and her back rested against his chest. “You know,” she said conversationally, “you’re not going to be able to fix everything with _cuddling._ ” Her firm belief that this was true did not stop her from bringing her hands up to curl over his where they rested on her hips.

Barnes nudged his nose against her ear. “I can try?”

She sighed deeply, “Seriously. What are we gonna _do?_ ”

“I did plan with this in mind,” he reminded her.

“Right, that’s why we’re only moving around for a few months. Got it. But… Barnes, living on the run? I – that’s not something I could picture myself doing for any length of time _before_ , but with a baby? We have to figure something else out. There’s got to be some way to contact Jane and Thor – and Thor knows some seriously kick-ass people. If we could just get to him…”

There was a very faint rumble coming from Barnes’s chest, making her skin tingle and go all prickly. If she wasn’t bonded to him, it probably would have kick started all sorts of fear responses, but since she _was_ it was doing something decidedly different.

“Whoa, there,” she said, twisting a little so she could look back at him.

He was scowling, his pupils just the slightest bit dilated, and his upper lip was starting to curl away from his teeth.

“What’s wrong with you?” Darcy asked, confused.

“This… _Thor_ – “ he managed to grit out. “You… what is he to you?”

She blinked. “I… my bestest friend’s mate? My pseudo-older brother? No, wait, we’re not quite that close. Cool pseudo-cousin?”

Barnes seemed to deflate. “Oh.”

“Wait, were you _jealous?_ ”

His hands flexed lightly on her hips. “I was… concerned.”

“Oh my god, _seriously?_ ”

“You trust him to protect you.”

She tried to scoot away so she could face him fully, but he immediately looped his arms around her waist and pulled her flush against his chest. Darcy settled for thumping a fist on his thigh – his very muscular, warm, thigh – to punctuate her protests because he was being _ridiculous_. “It’s not like I said, _Oh yes, let us throw ourselves upon the mercy of my benevolent Alpha-friend_ , for crying out loud! Thor’s not even _human!_ Thor doesn’t even _have_ a dynamic as we understand it! And I was advocating for numbers! More people keeping Hydra from getting near us! What the _hell_ , Barnes? If the _real_ reason you wanna stay away from people is some weird Alpha-y desire to keep me all to yourself – “

She started breathing harder, coming close to panic because, again, the truth of the matter was that if that _was_ the case, then she had little in the way of recourse. She was, in fact, in an even worse position than she’d been before they bonded. If they had a regular bond, then things would be different, but the way things had shaken out she _hated_ making him upset _instinctively_. Between his physical strength and the bond’s influence she _would_ end up going with him, no matter what her higher brain functions thought about it.

“Darcy, _Darcy!_ ” He pushed her face-down on the mattress and covered her body with his. Part of her was annoyed that being _crowded_ like that was such an instant soother to her Omega instincts, the rest of her was too busy being relieved that he _wanted_ to calm her down, that he was _trying_ to break her out of the rough hold of her baser nature. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. He sat up a little to rest on his elbows so his hands were free to gently tug her hair out from underneath her head and shoulder and then braid it back.

She honestly wasn’t sure if that last was for her benefit or _his_. He sounded genuinely freaked out.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “You’re right. I’m… I’m not thinking things through clearly.” He growled, and though it was clearly self-directed, it still made her tense a little. He rubbed his hand down her spine, calming her again, “God, I can’t do anything right.” He chuckled humorlessly, “Not even rescue a pretty dame. I shoulda let you go soon as we were out of that base.”

She cleared her throat. “I couldn’t really talk for almost an hour after we got out of that base, remember?”

“True. Still, you woulda been better off with almost anyone else…” He sighed, slumping down until his forehead was pressing lightly against the back of her neck. “I ain’t exactly normal, Darcy. The metal arm’s just the beginning of it, and with what-all has been done to me I may _never_ be completely right. I – I want to do right by you, but I don’t know – I just _don’t know -_ ”

“I don’t know, either,” she said quietly. “… Maybe we can figure it out together?”

Barnes let out a loose, shuddery breath. “ _Please._ ”

“Okay,” Darcy took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then released it slowly to give herself time to think. “That means all cards on the table, all right? I’ll tell you what my friends can do, you tell me what sorts of resources you have access to, okay?” She felt him nod. “Great! So, we’ll do that. We’ll do that _later_ , right now, I just want to – “

“Stay here for a while?” he asked, his voice a little shaky.

She nodded, not looking up.

“Fine by me,” he said. Barnes slid off of her and to one side, drawing her over so that her back was, once again, to his chest and they were spooning. She tried to wriggle back into him without moving her hips too much – there were certain kinds of touching that she was not yet mentally prepared to address outside of her heat – and sink into his warm, muscular strength and the aura of safety he projected.

‘Safe’ was something they would have to work on, though.

 _But_ , she thought with a faint smile, letting her eyes drift closed in preparation for a nap, _at least we’re working on it together, now._

…

 _He’s all alone again. I’ve left him all alone,_ Steve thought, staring with clenched fists at the impressive carnage that was all that was left of the Hydra base. Natasha had sent him the coordinates with a brief warning, but even with her words he hadn’t been entirely prepared for what they had found. The smell was godawful: blood, fear, the potent scent-mix of battle, and threaded throughout was _Bucky’s_ smell. It might’ve changed over the years, layers had been added, while some undertones faded – or were scrubbed – away, but he knew the scent of his bondmate. His bondmate, who was alive and angry, but not in anywhere near as much pain as he’d been days earlier – which went a long way towards lessening the Alpha-aggression that had been tightening his muscles and keeping a half-snarl on his face when he wasn’t consciously holding it back.

Sam, currently skimming through the readouts on a Starkpad they’d plugged into some surviving tech, gave a low whistle. “Steve, you’re gonna wanna read this,” he called. “Kinda wish your boy hadn’t been so liberal with the bullets, most of the other systems aren’t accessible with our level of tech, but – “

“Stark will be here soon,” Steve said, making his way over.

“Yeah, but you’re not gonna wanna delay.” Sam waited till the other man was beside him and pointed at two project files.

“ _Serum Generations_ and a new weapon program.” Steve snorted, “Of course.”

“That generations thing, Steve… it doesn’t look like all of their subjects were volunteers.”

“Of course,” Steve said again, his grip on his shield going white-knuckled with strain. “Goddamn Hydra.”

“If it’s any consolation, looks like Barnes’s got basically the same view, right now,” Sam mused, scanning the lab again.

The entire base had been riddled with dead men and women, most wearing nondescript Hydra uniforms or lab coats. It had been interesting to note the way that the fighting had shifted though: it looked like Barnes’s entry path had been entirely brutal, mostly hand-to-hand and either quick and silent or, well, the phrase _to the pain_ was not an inaccurate descriptor – and it was going on Steve’s list of things to look up, especially after the horrified face Sam had made when he hadn’t recognized it. His exit path, though, was almost entirely long-range: guns he’d brought with him, guns he’d taken from dead Hydra, very little in the way of close-quarters fighting. Sadly, there was no footage to inspect right then, Hydra cleaner programs doing all they could to scrub incriminating details as soon as the higher ups learned the base was compromised, but Sam was sure Stark would be able to retrieve _something_.

“Yeah,” Steve said, breaking the other man out of his thoughts, “but there’s…” He frowned, thinking. “Something’s not right. He must have found something, in the files or in the base, _learned_ something that made him change priorities. We need to do another sweep, look for any anomalies. _Anything_.”

The second sweep revealed an entire section of labs that smelled so godawful that even Sam, a Beta, was sent reeling from the overwhelming scent of distressed Omega. “Mother of god,” he whispered. “What were they _doing?_ ”

“I don’t know,” Steve said grimly. “Lets find out.”

There was another lab, this one almost fully intact. This time, when Sam plugged in his Starkpad, the results were near instantaneous.

“Shit, looks like this is where they were working on the _Generations_ program,” Sam said, swallowing thickly.

There were pictures and brief videos of a whole host of Omegas – men and women – all suffering from increasing amounts of wear and tear as their stay wore on. Almost all of the files had a red _Deceased_ and then a brief description of how and why they hadn’t survived the process. The last two were marked green: one of them still had a red _Deceased_ , though the reason for death was suspiciously absent, but the second… the second was marked _Viable_ with a _Proceed to Stage 2 as soon as subject is ready._

The headshot for the final subject showed a beautiful young woman with big blue eyes and a full-lipped, smiling mouth. Sam tapped on her file and immediately went still. “Steve! We’ve got a problem. A _really big one_.” He turned to the other man, jabbing his finger at the screen, “This girl? Right here? This is Darcy Lewis.”

Steve looked at him blankly.

“She was in New Mexico when Thor landed? Works with Dr. Foster?”

“Thor’s girl, right. Wait, are you saying she’s Hydra?”

“Nah, man, she’s been missing for a while, nobody’s sure how long ‘cause she was still checking in – or somebody who _sounded_ like her was. It looks like she was here the whole time.” He flicked through the file, going pale as a few videos came up of a worryingly limp Darcy being inserted into what looked like a web of metal. “Steve,” he began slowly, “she was here, and she survived the process but there’s nothing in here about _moving her,_ so she – “

“ _Bucky,_ ” Steve said with wide eyes, immediately connecting the dots. He turned and tore off down the hall, deeper into the bowels of the laboratory wing. There was one large lab, and then a whole section that was, Steve could only assume, devoted to the _subjects_. He found a few dead guards, but only a few. Most of them had probably headed out to deal with the intruder before Bucky could make it that far.

None of the rooms were occupied. All of them were, in fact, completely sterile and bare – save one. Steve froze outside the open door, ignoring the sound of Sam’s footsteps hurrying closer as he focused on breathing – and _smelling_. He could smell Bucky, yes, but he could also smell –

“Omega,” he murmured.

“Guess this is where they kept ‘em,” Sam said, a little out of breath.

Steve’s head tilted back a little, his mouth dropping open the better to take in the scent. Slowly, he stepped forward, into the room. It was small: a bed, a sink, and a small curtain that partially obscured a toilet and a shower nozzle the only things inside. The only things he could _see_ at least, but the materials held scent and the scents in the room gave him a much clearer picture.

“They tortured her,” he said roughly, edging into the room.

“I can smell it, too.”

“She musta been here for _weeks_ ,” Steve went on. He took another deep breath and nearly choked on it as realization struck him: he almost hadn’t recognized the smell, almost hadn’t placed it since it’d been so long since he’d encountered it – the modern era offering so many ways to mask it, to erase it, to keep it from being an everyday part of life the way it had been in his childhood. “She was going into _heat_.”

“Probably what they meant by the subject being ‘ready.’”

He nodded.

“Steve… what do you think Barnes would do, confronted with a terrified Omega in pre-heat?”

A thousand defenses rose to Steve’s lips, but died before they could go anywhere. He knew what Bucky would have done, the Bucky from before the war, the Alpha with a smile or a ready quip prepared for any situation. He knew what the Bucky who had come out of that camp would have done and, while it was probably more violent than pre-war Bucky’s normal reaction, it still would have ended with the Omega safe, cared for, and not terrified out of her wits. The Bucky of now was a strange creature, little bits of the Buckys of before, but so much more aggressive, different enough that –

“I don’t know,” he said. “He wouldn’t hurt her, though. Not if she didn’t attack him.”

“Good.” He sighed, looking around, “Wherever she is, she’s not here _now_.”

“This is what changed,” Steve realized. “This is what shifted his priorities.”

Sam blinked. “Wait, you think – “

“He took her with him.”

“Well, shit.”

…

The part of the conversation where Darcy had explained how she’d ended up on Hydra’s radar and he had explained how and why he hated Hydra so much – the 'short version,' which was more like a summary of an overview, had still taken nearly a half hour – had gone much better than he'd expected. Now that they were actually discussing their personal, pertinent specifics…

“ _James Buchanan Barnes?!_ ”

“I’m not the same man – “

“The James Buchanan Barnes who was a part of the Howling Commandos? Bonded mate of _Captain America?!_ ”

Barnes sighed. “Yes.”

“Oh, okay,” Darcy said faintly. “Continue. I’ll just. Process.”

“I’m still remembering things. I know I’ve got most of the big stuff, but,” he shrugged. “The little things that make up a life, those’re harder to hold onto. I… wasn’t joking when I said I was still trying to piece myself back together. I remember fallin’ off that train, being in the snow, and – “ Barnes cut off when her hand settled over his wrist, looking down to see that he had both of his fists clenched and pressing down into the bedspread. He looked up to find her looking at him sympathetically from where she sat cross-legged, just a few inches away.

“Hey. Don’t force it.”

He blew out a breath and nodded. “I remember bits and pieces. More every day. You… you’ve been a big help.”

“Me?” Darcy gaped at him, wide-eyed, “What on earth have I done for you besides add to your troubles? Jesus, Barnes, you’re _already bonded_. You’re bonded to Captain _Frickin’_ America! Oh my god. Captain America is going to kill me for bonding his – oh god.”

Barnes stared at her. “I just finished tellin’ you I was a brainwashed assassin for god knows how long and you’re worried about what _Steve_ is gonna do?”

“Yes!” she hissed. “I am worried about what _Steve_ is going to do when he finds out I have _bonded with his bondmate!_ ”

He shrugged, “Probably wanna bond with you, too.”

She blinked rapidly, mouth gaping open and shut, then said, “Nope,” and slipped off of the bed, heading for the bathroom. Barnes watched her shut the door, then heard a soft thump and a continued stream of, “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope…”

He made his way over and sat so his back was braced against the bathroom door. “Darcy?”

“Barnes… wait, so I’ve been calling you by your last name this whole time. Should I call you James, instead? Or Bucky?”

He tried not to flinch, too many memories associated with being called _Bucky_ starting to fight for his attention and it was not the right time for that. “Stick with Barnes for now, it’s how I’ve been thinking of myself while I… adjust.”

She coughed and it was clear she was trying to exert some measure of control over her voice, which was shaky. “Barnes,” she said again, plaintively, “I am _twenty-four years old_ , and I realize that, back in your day, Omegas were probably already bonded and having kids and what-not but this was _not in my plan yet_.” She took a deep breath, hiccupping a little, before she confessed, “I don’t even know how I feel about being bonded to _you_. I’ve never had a serious, long-term relationship before _in my life_ and now I’m b-bonded and _pregnant_ and you’re talking about this other Alpha, _your_ bondmate, and bonding with him and – this is not a foregone conclusion, okay? This is my _life_ we’re talking about and I want, no, I _need_ a say!”

Barnes attempted to throttle down the very real desire to snarl and tear at the door until she was back where she belonged, which, in spite of what she was saying, was in his arms again. “… Will you open the door?”

“Are you going to try and cuddle me until my _very reasonable_ fears go away?” she asked suspiciously.

“No,” he said immediately, then looked down at his hands, which were clenching and unclenching spasmodically. _There is no way I’m gonna be coherent enough for this conversation if I can’t touch her,_ he realized, a little dismayed at the sheer strength of his own response to her. “Well. Not entirely.”

There was a soft sigh, and then a quiet, “Okay,” before the door opened and he was blinking up at her.

He held out a hand and she pursed her lips, frowning a little, but she _did_ take it and let him draw her down into his lap. He immediately wrapped himself around her: his face in her hair, his arms winding about her, and positioning her so her legs were curled to either side of his waist, leaving them pressed chest-to-chest. He focused on nothing but breathing for a moment or two, letting her scent wash over him and ease away the harshest edge of his response.

“I wasn’t trying to make it a… _foregone conclusion_ ,” he said. “I was _trying_ to calm you down about Steve.” He sighed, “Worked really well, didn’t it?”

“Your choice of comfort was not actually comforting, no,” she said, voice slightly muffled with the way her face was pressed against his shoulder, but still discernable.

“I understand that this isn’t something you chose – “

“Technically, I don’t think it’s really something _you_ chose with full knowledge either.”

Barnes groaned. “Darcy, this is hard enough for me without you interrupting before I can get a full thought out.”

“I… Yeah, okay.”

“Thank you. Now, I know this isn’t something _either_ of us chose _with full knowledge_ ,” he smiled when she nuzzled in closer to him at that, “but that doesn’t mean that _I_ don’t want it. Right now, I mean. I… want to keep you.” _I don’t think I can let you go,_ he thought. It was not really a comfortable thought to have, and he knew it wasn’t one he could share if he didn’t want to frighten her. “I want you to stay because you _want_ to,” he explained, “and I don’t want a misplaced fear of Steve, the best Alpha I ever met, to drive you away.”

“So, no throwing me, willy-nilly, into a triad bond with _Captain America?_ ” she asked, half-joking and half-serious.

Barnes concealed his eye roll in her hair. “Steve’s pretty slow-moving, Darcy. We didn’t bond until we were already overseas, in the camp, and even _then_ we prob’ly wouldn’t have bonded so quick as that ‘cept we were still all caught up in our battle-haze and it was the first time we’d seen each other since Steve went and got all muscled up. He wasn’t healthy enough to rut before then. And… could you try and think of him as Steve instead of Captain America? We're gonna run into him eventually, might help if you try and wear the shiny off before you meet him and he starts trippin' over his tongue. Punk never could figure out how to talk to pretty people without a gun in his hand or a mission on his mind.”

“I'll… try? You know, your accent gets a lot thicker when you talk about him,” she muttered.

“That a problem?”

“Nah,” she pressed a quick kiss to the corner of his jaw. “I kinda like it.”

“That’s good,” he said, trying not to focus on her soft lips while he was wrapped around her and she was wrapped around him. If she was gun-shy now, he really doubted that would be improved by any overtures, even if he _was_ dying to make them. “You feelin’ a little better?”

“About slow-moving Steve?”

“… Please call him that to his face, at least once.”

She giggled, and it made him smile, but her voice was serious when she spoke. “If you’re so sure he’s gonna have a good reaction, why haven’t we contacted him yet? I mean, he is totally one of the friends of Thor that I was talking about. Small world, huh?”

“The smallest, but… Darcy, the last time I saw Steve I put him in the hospital. I’m sure that, when we meet again, he’s gonna be angry with me about a _lot_ of things. Bonding with a gorgeous dame like you? That’s gonna be pretty far down the list. Might even be the only semi-decent thing I’ve done since I fell off that train, and it’s _not_ decent ‘cause you weren’t in your right mind.”

“ _Neither were you,_ ” she said again, this time accompanying the admonishment with a pinch to his side.

That was true, but he’d been a lot more in-control than she had been when he’d opened that door. Even now, looking back, he wasn’t sure how much that choice – to check on her – had been motivated by concern and how much had been motivated by _wanting to open the goddamn door._ “I…” he sighed. “You’re right, but I still shouldn’t have. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“But it did. So we have to deal with any problems that arise from that.”

He nodded, “Isn’t that what started this conversation in the first place?”

“You’re right.” She leaned back and favored him with a mock-suspicious look, “You have any other bizarre secrets or hidden bondmates I need to worry about?” Her eyes went wide with not-at-all mock panic, “Oh my god, you were a Russian super assassin. You’re not – you didn’t – the _Black Widow?!_ ”

Barnes thought about it. “That’s the redhead who fought with Steve in New York, right?”

She nodded mutely, still staring at him.

“I think I mighta… trained her? I don’t think we, ah…”

“Fucked?” she supplied.

Such a dirty word coming from such a beautiful woman should _not_ have revved him up that much. He attempted to subtly readjust her position in his lap so they weren’t pressed _quite_ so close. “Yeah, pretty sure they just pulled me outta the freezer long enough to show her the ropes, test her… I can’t really be sure, though.”

“You’re not bonded though, right?”

This time he let her see him roll his eyes. “Pretty sure I woulda remembered _that._ ”

“Fair enough. I think… I think our next step should be trying to get in touch with someone. _Safely,_ ” she said, biting her lip.

Barnes shifted her a little further away.

“Thoughts?”

He thought about contacting Steve, meeting him again with _both_ of them knowing what he’d done, everyone he killed. The thought made him want to tear something apart, and he wasn’t sure if he would have preferred for that something to be Hydra or himself. On the other hand, he looked down at Darcy, who was staring back at him with a questioning look in her big, blue eyes. It wasn’t just about him and what he wanted, he had to worry over her and… he didn’t let his eyes flick down to her stomach but he took a deep breath. Darcy smelled sweet and warm, a little like him in a way that made him want to curl up in that space between her neck and shoulder and never let her go, and she smelled like new life.

“I’ll start looking for a safe way to contact them as soon as we can find a place we can stay for a few days.”

She brightened, “Like another safe house?”

“Yes.”

“With its own washing machine and dryer, where it won’t smell like other people?”

He tried, probably unsuccessfully, not to smile at her enthusiasm. “Yes.”

Darcy did a little shimmy of happiness that made his breath rush out and slipped off of his lap to dance around the room. “Awesome!”

There was something about knowing that she was happy that made _him_ happy, but still, he couldn’t help the apprehension he felt about seeing Steve again and, though he’d put on a good front, introducing one bondmate to the other. He hadn’t exaggerated his feelings on the matter: even after just a few days of knowing her, he was absolutely certain that Steve would adore her. She was bright and beautiful and, as she slowly came out of her shell and became more _herself_ had a sassy streak as long and wide as Steve’s stubborn one.

Steve was gonna love her.

 _Now_ he was worried about how _she’d_ react to _Steve_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few of you guessed how the conversation with Bucky would go, which made me ^__^
> 
> Also, since I'm sure at least some of you will be curious:  
> 1\. Sam knows about Darcy because he spent the time while Steve was recovering being adopted into the Avengers via excessive texting by Tony and Natasha. This may end up a side story at some point.  
> 2\. Fuck Nat's MCU backstory. Just. Fuck it.  
> 3\. PLEASE NOTE that I have updated the tags. There is an upcoming scene involving battle haze, serum-enhanced instincts, and the OT3 that got a bit darker than intended. If you have any questions about this, please let me know, but also be aware that I will be posting an extremely explicit warning in said chapter.


	9. P1, in which progress is made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is part one of two (I had to split the chapter because it got HELLA LONG).
> 
>  
> 
> Also, brief _**warning**_ that things get a bit frisky towards the end of this chapter.

A few days later and Darcy was staring at safe house number two. It looked a lot like the last one, right down to it being in a woods and in a Carolina, though this time it was _North_ Carolina and not South. She clasped her hands in front of her and waited for Barnes to finish fussing with the car and grabbing their stuff – he still made weird noises about her carrying anything, but that made a little more sense to her now that she knew that A) she was pregnant and B) he was _literally_ an old-fashioned gentleman.

“Well?” he said, coming up to stand beside her.

She turned and got the most fleeting impression of anxiety on his face for a _fraction_ of a second before it was gone and he was back to looking mildly curious. “It looks _perfect,_ ” she said, enunciating carefully, and was instantly rewarded with the slight relaxing of his shoulders. It was coming home to her more and more that, not only did he care for her, but he _cared_ and was genuinely invested in making her _happy_. It was all very fairytale Hollywood Alpha  & Omega, complete with the eighties-tastic romance novel beginning. It was both flattering and _intimidating as hell_ to realize that this incredibly strong Alpha was probably relying on her almost as much as she was on him, albeit in different ways.

“We’ll be here at least three days,” he said. “There are some contacts I… remember… Ones who I should still be able to use even though – things have changed.“ He grimaced and shrugged, then finished with a repeated, “Things have changed.”

“Do you think,” Darcy asked hopefully, “that we could hit up a Wal-mart or something? Or just you. You could go?”

Instantly he was 100% focused on her. “What do you need?” She felt like there was a heavily implied, _What have I overlooked?_

“Well, I mean, if we’re gonna be here for a few days some cleaning supplies would be nice. And,” she sighed wistfully, “I would love another pair of jeans.”

“I can get you jeans, and cleaning supplies.”

“The cleaning supplies sure, but the jeans?”

He eyed her, one corner of his mouth crooking up. “I have very well-developed spatial-awareness… I’m certain I can approximate your general figure.”

Flushing, and not entirely certain why, she nodded. “Okay, cool, well then… maybe some simple meal stuff, too? I mean, I can’t really cook, but – “

“I can.”

“Really? That’s not very, ah – “

Barnes smiled wryly, “I spent most of my youthful bachelorhood cooking for Steve, I’m sure I can come up with something for you.”

“Okay then, go team,” she said. “I’ll just focus on the cleaning, you do the cooking, and I’ll bake. Cool.”

Barnes looked like he was on the verge of saying something, but instead he shut his mouth and smiled, shaking his head. “You get settled, I’ll get supplies.”

“If you bring back anything banana-flavored I will _end you._ ”

“Not your favorite anymore?”

“ _Definitely_ a case of too much of a good thing,” she sighed.

Barnes made a soft humming sound and smirked, “No such thing, in my experience.” With that and a _very deliberate_ elevator look, and those eyes were already a killer blue, this just wasn’t _fair_ , he turned away.

Darcy stared after him as he whistled, _whistled_ , as he strolled back to the car. They’d switched three more times, this one was a brownish sedan, and she had _barely_ restrained all the soccer mom jokes she was dying to make. Though speaking of which - she glanced down at her still-flat stomach, “Your daddy is just _full_ of surprises.”

Baby did not respond, not that she expected much.

“You’re totally gonna be a daddy’s girl,” she muttered. “I’m calling it now.”

…

It was strange to be in the cabin and not on the road. In the car, they’d always been within arm’s reach of each other. Even when they stopped, they were usually only stopping to sleep and were apart for a limited amount of time. At the cabin, there was room to move around – Darcy took full advantage of Barnes’s obsessive perimeter-watching and sunned herself in the fresh air as much as possible since he had already _checked_ , so it was, of course, _safe_.

She found herself more aware of him and his proximity to her. She still wanted him close, but now there was more of an element of choice to it. There was no television, but he’d brought back the best selection of what Wal-mart – or wherever he had stopped to buy necessities, including a few pairs of jeans that fit her _perfectly_ \- had to offer, so she spent the evening curled up on the beat-up couch swapping newspapers and books back and forth with him. Even when she was just moving around the cabin, she’d started to develop a few habits: if he was on the couch when she walked by, she’d run the pads of her fingers from his crown to the top of his ubiquitous messy bun. Darcy had debated teaching him how to do a _proper_ bun, but she enjoyed the results of his ineptitude too much to fix it. He was the same, too: running a hand along her side or down her spine in passing. It didn’t matter, in the end, which of them initiated, the other would always lean in, pressing into the touch.

It was incredibly, _frighteningly_ domestic, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

No, the worst thing was that Barnes was _hot_.

 _Burning_ hot. _Sun_ hot. Holy-shit-get-a-load-of-that _hot_ … and he was _hers_.

But she hadn’t _wanted_ him to be hers?

It was confusing. She was confused, and it was difficult to sort things out when the object of said confusion was around constantly, being distractingly, _devastatingly_ , attractive. He wasn’t even aware of it. Sure, he was getting a little more flirty as he ‘put himself back together’ – and James Buchanan Barnes had freaking _history books_ that discussed, _seriously_ discussed, just how charismatic he was - but there were clear signs when he was trying to be charming, when he was _overtly_ attempting to get her to look his way. Sleeping bundled up into his arms was still more comforting than stimulating, but every day the balance tipped just a little more in the other direction. The problem was that he really didn’t have to try that hard for her to find him sexy, _damnit._

He was _naturally magnetic_ , the bastard. She sighed, slumping back so her head rested on the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling and letting the paper she’d been perusing drop down onto her lap. Barnes was in the kitchen doing something arcane with some chicken he’d purchased that would probably result in stupidly tasty food. He was kind of perfect… if you ignored that ‘Hydra brainwashing’ thing.

“Why are you scowling?” he asked taking the five steps required to move from kitchen to ‘living area’ and bracing himself on the couch so he could lean over and look down at her.

“Ugh. Your _face,_ ” she blurted.

His lips twitched. “What did my face do to you, Darcy?”

“It _exists_ ,” she told him honestly, “all… stupidly handsome. Stop that.”

He did not ‘stop that,’ in fact he _grinned_ which took him from ‘handsome’ to ‘holy shit I’d hit that in a hot minute.’ “You think I’m handsome?” he asked, sounding delighted.

“ _Stupidly_ handsome,” she corrected.

“I’ll take the stupid if it gets me the handsome.”

“ _Ugh_.” She put a hand up and flattened it over his smiley expression, gently shoving him away. “Go make our food.”

He caught her hand and planted a quick kiss to her palm, making her skin tingle. “Whatever you say, dollface,” he said, wearing a positively _shit-eating grin_.

“ _Dollface?_ ” she blinked. “Where did that come from?”

He snorted, “Same place I did – the first half of the last century.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “You start calling me a ‘moll’ and we’ll have _words._ ”

Barnes frowned looking halfway between offended and confused, “I wouldn’t – why would I call you a _moll?_ ”

“Clearly I know less about 1940’s slang than you do about modern slang. We can discuss it _over dinner._ ”

“Right, right, going.” He pressed one more kiss to her hand – this time to her knuckles – and headed for the kitchen.

She did not watch him walk away. Nope. Her eyes were glued to the paper. The very fascinating paper.

…

The next day was, if anything, _worse_ than the one before because, it seemed that now that Bucky _knew_ she enjoyed his face he was relaxing his guard and letting himself be more expressive and it just. Was not. _Fair._ She wondered idly, while she watched him read a passage from the paper aloud to her, whether or not it would be okay for her to tell him to put a bag over his head for a while so she could have a think. Nah, he’d probably take it as encouragement.

“ – rcy? Darcy, you alright?”

She shook her head, dropping those thoughts. “Yes, why?”

He studied her, “You were starin’ off into space.”

“I do that sometimes.”

Barnes looked a little suspicious, but moved on. “I need to head out for a while today, I got ahold of one of the contacts I told you about on the first day we were here, but I need to check in with her again if I’m gonna get anything outta her. She’s pretty suspicious.”

“Will you be gone long?”

His lips twisted – he had _really_ nice lips, no! Bad Darcy! – “Longer than I’d like.”

“I’ll be _fine_ ,” she said. “I’m not going to go wandering off and you said this place is safe, right? What’s the worst – “

Barnes fairly _flew_ across the small space that separated them and clapped his hand over her mouth. “I’d really rather you didn’t tempt fate, dollface,” he said, looking equal parts grim and amused.

She glared at him and, in a fit of not particularly well thought out revenge, licked his palm.

He inhaled sharply and dropped his hand, his eyes lowering to her mouth and then he licked his lips. “Darcy,” he said hoarsely, “you… You should. _I_ should go take a walk.” He didn’t move.

“Why?”

He smiled, but it was a touch pained. “If one of us doesn’t leave the room, I’m gonna end up kissing you.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” She wasn’t sure which of them she was asking.

“I – “ he shut his eyes and visibly steeled himself. “Not for me,” he answered, “but I don’t think it’s what you want.”

“I _do_ ,” she blurted, blushing when his eyes snapped open and she was suddenly the focus of that very bright, very blue gaze. “I do want that,” she almost whispered, “I’m just… I’m – “ _scared_ ” - nervous.” _I know it’s silly and that we’ve already bonded but kissing you feels like something… else._ “I want to kiss you, but I don’t think I’m ready for,” she made a vague, fluttery hand gesture, ending with a shrug, a weak smile and an, “anything else.”

His entire posture shifted, just a little. “But kissing?”

“I could do kissing,” she affirmed.

Barnes watched her carefully, looking for any hesitance as he slowly wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer, slipping one arm under her knees and drawing her over so she was sitting crossways on his lap. One arm slipped up to rest between her shoulder blades, the other stayed resting on her knee. “You sure, Darcy?” he asked and oh, _oh_ , she hadn’t heard _that_ voice before. At least, she didn’t recall it consciously, but her _body_ remembered that voice, and her skin went prickly with gooseflesh at the sound.

“I – “ She licked her lips, staring at his mouth. “Yeah. Wait, what was the question.”

He chuckled and leaned in, brushing his lips against hers just once, then pulling back. “Okay?”

“You call that a kiss?”

“I call that testing the waters.”

“Oh.” She ducked her head and closed her teeth delicately over the very end of his chin, nipping him lightly. “I think I’d rather you just – “ she found herself flat on her back on the couch, staring up at Barnes, who had maneuvered himself between her legs, all before she could finish: “ – dove in.”

He was fairly trembling, bracing himself above her on hands planted to either side of her shoulders. His eyes had gone wide and he was breathing deeply, chest brushing lightly against hers with every inhalation. “Please. Don’t… don’t push. Not if you want me to keep control.”

Darcy nodded, then lifted her arms over her head and clenched her hands around the arm of the couch. “Your show.”

He let out a bark of laughter, shutting his eyes. “That is _not_ helping.”

“What? I’m letting you run things, that is the _opposite_ of pushing!”

Barnes groaned, “I don’t think you have any idea how tempting you are.”

“I’m not… trying to be?”

This time he _growled._ “I know, that makes it worse.”

 _Actually,_ she thought with something approaching wonder, _I think that makes it mutual._ “Kiss me,” she demanded.

She saw him coming this time, but she still wasn’t prepared for it. His lips were warm, soft, moving over hers slowly, tenderly. She hummed a little in the back of her throat, wanting to grab onto him but knowing it probably wasn’t the best of ideas. Instead, she parted her lips, just a little, licking at the corner of his mouth.

It was like a bomb went off.

Suddenly the hand in her hair tightened and was tilting her head back. His mouth was lower, on her neck. He wasn’t biting, exactly, but neither was he kissing her. Instead he was scraping his teeth gently over her pulse-point while a faint rumbling sound that was not unlike purring emanated from his chest. Darcy gasped, hips shifting a little and felt him: he wasn’t fully hard, not yet, but what was there already was impressive and it made her want to arch up and rub against him, encourage – no, she wasn’t supposed to do that. She wanted to take things _slow_ … even if it was getting difficult to remember _why_ right now.

“ _Darcy,_ ” he rasped out and bit down. It felt like a reprimand and a reward, all at once.

The muscles in her arms were shaking from how tightly she was holding to the couch. “ _Barnes_ \- I – “

He lifted his head and smirked down at her, eyes wicked. “I think, under these circumstances, you should probably start calling me ‘Bucky.’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IF you have not yet read the tags: _READ THE FRIGGIN' TAGS, PEOPLE, PLEASE._
> 
>  
> 
> Also, I have been positively _floored_ by the response to this story. You are all incredibly lovely people, and it is a pleasure to get to share my hobby with you. Thank you :-)


	10. P2, in which progress is made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have internet at home at the mo, posting this from my bro's house while I watch the kidlets. So…HI and GOODBYE and I am sorry for being behind on responding but, well, re: no internet at home. I feel guilty using the internet at work (even when I'm clocked out) so, yeah. Hopefully will be getting fixed soon. Like, tomorrow. PLEASE GOD.

Sam considered hiding his intentions from Steve for about half a minute but, realistically, it would be nigh impossible to sneak away for a phone call and in all probability Steve would completely understand if he explained his concerns. So he did. “I’m gonna go call Natasha,” he told the blond as soon as the other man exited the shower. “You’ve been acting kind of off, but since my baseline for you involves Hydra and helicarriers, I wanna seek a second opinion.”

Steve froze, frowned for a second, then nodded ruefully and resumed scrubbing his towel over his hair. “Tell her I said ‘hi.’”

“You okay with this?”

He shrugged. “I know what’s going on, but she can explain it better than I can.”

“Alright then, see you in a few.”

Steve nodded amiably, and Sam left.

They were in their third motel in twice as many days – driving more than they slept. Steve was committed to tracking Bucky down and Sam was committed to helping him. The problem was that the brainwashed assassin had gone completely off the grid. In lieu of leads, the two of them had been hitting up every SHIELD safe house and outpost that might have been compromised as they meandered away from the coast and across the country. Sam was eternally grateful for Natasha’s help, as well as Tony Stark’s, without them he was sure Steve would have gone crazy by now. As it was, there was a constant, fine tension running through him, and it was getting increasingly worse as the days wore on with no real sign of Barnes.

They were in Indiana at the moment, fresh off an outpost that had been…cleaned out, for lack of a better descriptor. All they’d found were two dead agents, who they could only assume must have been loyal SHIELD caught in the crossfire, and a facility that had been wiped of anything useful. It hadn’t really helped Steve’s mood and, to be truthful, pissed Sam off, too.

He sighed and headed to the car, leaning back against it and pulling out his recently assigned Stark phone. He’d signed up for this, really, he had, but he hadn’t counted on getting all of the rest of the Avengers along with Steve when he threw in with big, blond, and breathtakingly stubborn. So far he’d only really been in contact with two of the others, but he was hearing enough about the rest – along with quite a lot of chatter about ‘fixing his wings’ from Stark – that he figured it was only a matter of time. The Asgardian, Thor, was off on one of the _other_ realms, else – according to Dr. Foster, as paraphrased by Stark – there would have been _Hel_ to pay by now for Darcy’s absence. Dr. Banner had reappeared at Stark Tower just in time for the start of SHIELD’s meltdown, and Stark had his hands full trying to keep the guy from disappearing again. Hawkeye was off on some long-term mission, or just _off_ , Sam wasn’t sure. Natasha was looking for him, or working with him; either way she apparently had that situation well in hand. Meanwhile Sam was following Captain America around the country kicking ass, taking names, and hunting for the long lost love of the icon’s life. Sam still wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to explain this mid-life career change to his parents without incurring serious concern and/or wrath. Ah well, that was a question for another day.

It took only a moment for Natasha to pick up, and when she did she greeted him with a warm, “Sam!”

“Natasha, how’s my favorite redhead?”

She chuckled, “Good, good. You?”

“Worried, bordering on outright concerned.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, immediately all business.

“It’s Steve, he’s…” Sam sighed, then bit the bullet, “He’s acting kind of off, and it’s setting off all kinds of warning bells. Last time I saw an Alpha this twitchy, he was just off a tour where he’d lost his whole team and come back to find one of his bonded mates had been a victim of assault. He looks like he’s on the verge of a battle-haze anytime we get near a Hydra outpost and it’s takin’ him longer and longer to come back from it.”

There was a short silence on the other end, then: “What do you know about the serum?”

“Uh… my knowledge of that side of science only goes as far as my high school biology course, and that was a long time ago.”

Nat scoffed, “Yeah, you’re an old man.”

“S’why I hang out with Steve, he keeps me young.”

She outright snorted at that. “Have you ever heard the Erskine quote?”

“What, that, ‘makes good better, bad worse’ thing?”

“If he’d lived long enough to study his results, he probably would have added a caveat about dynamics.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

He got the impression that she was choosing her words very carefully. “Meaning that the serum enhances every aspect of who and what a person is, including their dynamic: instincts, pheromone and hormone triggers - _everything_. It’s why unbonded Omegas were never a part of the original experiment: imagine an _enhanced_ Omega going into heat.”

Sam let out a low whistle, “… Darcy?”

“It’s clear they didn’t intend to let her remain unbonded for long and…” She sighed, “Steve may not be prepared to address it, but I doubt that – wherever she is – she’s unbonded right now.”

“What’s that mean for the Cap?”

“Serum-enhanced Alphas have a few near-uncontrollable, almost _atavistic_ drives when it comes to their bondmates and, to a lesser extent, their extended group,” she said carefully. “The clearest, most publicly known instances of this being expressed are when Steve Rogers rescued James Barnes from the Hydra base and when James Barnes was lost, later in the war.”

Sam settled himself more comfortably, perching on the hood of the car for what was, apparently, about to be a long conversation. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anything about that second one, but are you telling me Barnes and Rogers weren’t reunited with a spray of roses, cooing doves, and a patriotic brass band? Always thought that whole, ‘overcome with love on the moment of their reunion’ was too good to be true,” he said, sighing mock wistfully.

“They were certainly ‘overcome’ with _something_ ,” Natasha said dryly. “Hormones, battle-haze, and – the way Steve tells it – an impressive amount of lust.”

“Steve tells it with lust?”

“If you read between the lines.”

“And when, ah,” he coughed. “The second incident?”

“The records of both incidents are heavily redacted, but the files on that mission are almost nonexistent,” she said softly. “Even the primary reports turned in by the Howling Commandos are clearly… edited. Steve, well, it’s likely he fell into the haze as soon as Barnes was outside of the range of his senses. From what I can tell, he didn’t come _out_ of it until everyone else on that train, except for Zola, was dead. Zola was an Omega, he probably fell into a fear haze in reaction… and it’s probably the only thing that saved him.” Natasha sighed deeply, sounding pensive, “At that point in the war, with everything that Hydra was doing, any measures would have been considered excusable. I won’t say that what Rogers did that day on the train was over the line, I’ve done worse for less, but it was extraordinarily _fast_ and _thorough_. When the Commandos returned to base, they barely needed to replace any bullets, if that tells you anything.”

“Tells me a lot.”

“The thing to remember is that the instincts themselves aren’t good or bad, but in certain circumstances they’re _strong_ and they have a tremendous amount of influence on the serum-enhanced,” and something in her voice, a masked pain, made Sam sit up and take notice. “Part of the basis of the research was trying to find a way to capture the benefits of a haze-state without the drawbacks. Steve’s main haze-trigger is Barnes, and apparently it always has been, and he clearly defaults to a battle state in extremis. He’s a good man, but right now he’s a good man who knows that his bondmate has been tortured and abused for years… by the very organization that founded itself on the memory of their sacrifice. He is very angry, with very good reason.”

“Well, shit.”

Natasha huffed. “Yes, quite.”

“You know a lot about this,” he said, keeping his voice level. “Experience?”

The silence that followed was long enough that he wondered if she’d hung up on him. “The American historians like to forget that the ideas behind the serum were born in Europe, and that Erskine was only one part of a larger team, but the ideas – and some of the men who had them - survived.” She paused, a wealth of emotion in that brief silence, “Experience… yes, that is one way to put it.”

Surprised he’d gotten even _that_ much out of the notoriously close-lipped woman, Sam changed the subject. “So, what can I do for Steve?”

“You’re already doing it,” she said immediately. “He needs a team, people to keep him as grounded as possible. And… thank you, Sam. You’re a good man.”

He had never been so happy to _not_ be face-to-face with a beautiful woman. She’d made him _blush_ , for crying out loud! “I, ah, better go check on him. Lord knows what he’s doing all alone in that sad, sad hotel room.”

She laughed. “Go look out for the Alpha, Sam… and, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.”

“I – of course. Thanks,” he said, listening to her quiet ‘goodbye’ with half an ear. He sat for five minutes, staring at his phone, before he managed to gather himself enough to go back to the room he shared with Steve. “You’re imagining things, Wilson,” he told himself firmly. “Eyes on the prize. This is _not the time_.”

Miles (and continents) away, Nat grinned down at her own phone.

“Uh-oh, I _know_ that smile. That smile spells _trouble._ ”

“Relax,” she said, digging her elbow into Clint’s side. “I’ve got the situation well in hand.”

…

He stared down at Darcy: all big blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and kiss-swollen lips and – for the first time in a _goddamn long time_ it didn’t feel like he was made of a thousand pieces of a person, poorly patched together and just _reacting_. Though, to be fair, there were definitely a fair few _pieces_ of him that were reacting just then. He was still broken, still a shell of his former self, but for the first time he thought that that shell might just be shaped a little more like the man he’d been than what Hydra had made him.

“Bucky?” she said, sounding like she was testing the name on her tongue.

Oh. He hadn’t really thought this through. Bucky had not thought about what it would sound like to hear _that_ name from _her_ lips in _these_ circumstances. “It’s what they used to call me,” he said, trying to lock down any errant reactions.

Judging by the mischievous look on Darcy’s face, he hadn’t succeeded. “Bucky,” she said again, drawing the name out in a way that made a shudder run up his spine. “ _Bucky,_ ” she was fucking _purring_ his name, did she think he was made of stone? “I like it,” she decided. “ _Bucky._ ”

Thank god he’d gotten a fucking upgrade a few wipes ago, otherwise his arm would have overheated for all the gear-switching it was doing to keep up with his racing heart and mind. She wanted to take things slow. She _wanted to take things slow_. He needed to remember that. He needed to get off of her and go for a walk before he did something one of them might regret. Eventually. After several hours and a long nap. “Darcy…”

“That’s your ‘serious business’ tone,” she said, rolling her head back to look at the ceiling instead of him in what was probably meant to be taken as fond mockery but ended up _damn distracting_ because it meant that he got an eyeful of her long, white neck. Well, no longer _purely_ white – the bonding bite stood out in pink, fading to a silvery scar as it healed. Healing quickly, too, much quicker than he’d expected.

“You still wanna take things slow?” he asked.

She startled, hands twitching on the arm of the couch. “Um. Yes?”

Bucky shut his eyes rather than look at the appealing, and apparently _conflicted_ , picture she made. “Need you to make a decision, dollface.”

“… I think we should wait,” she said in a small voice.

His eyes instantly snapped open. “That’s _fine_ , Darcy. Promise. I just need to know so I don’t go overboard.”

“So,” she said, biting her lip while her eyes lit up with an unholy light, “no going _overboard_. But we could get a _little_ \- “

“ _Please don’t finish that sentence,_ ” he groaned, dropping his forehead to rest on the upper curve of her breast. He shivered when he felt fingers starting to work through his hair, starting at his scalp and gently tugging till they reached the band that held it back and pulled it loose. Bucky hummed a little, low in the back of his throat, when her second hand joined the first and she started scratching her nails against his scalp in an impromptu massage. Gradually, the tension that had nearly set him shaking transmuted into something softer, warmer, and definitely more sensual than sexual until he relaxed completely. He tried to keep the majority of his weight off of her, but ended up slumping gracelessly across her.

“I’ve discovered your secret, Bucky,” she said, a hint of a laugh in her voice.

“Hmm?”

“You’re a _cat!_ ” she said, sounding delighted.

“M’not a cat,” he muttered, nuzzling his way up until he could rest his face against her hair and neck, breathing in the sweet, airy smell of her contentment. He shifted over at the same time so he could rest against the back of the couch and tug her against him. He wormed one arm beneath her head, bending it down so he could grab one of her hands and rested the other on her hip. It meant he had to give up the head scratching, but it got her into his arms: even trade, so far as he was concerned.

“We gonna take a nap?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Thought you had to go into town?”

“Later.”

She sighed softly and snuggled back against him. “I can live with that.”

He pulled her closer and let himself drift off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may go back and edit this some more, not entirely happy with it.
> 
> Next chapter is when the shit starts to go down. I will post warnings in the header. READ THEM.


	11. in which shit gets real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **BRIEF WARNING:**
> 
>  
> 
> Turns out, most of the triggery shit will be happening in the next chapter. I will still warn for **VIOLENCE:** not super graphic, but there's some stuff with a knife that happens on-screen, and a whole helluva lot implied. Some non-consensual (but not necessarily sexual) groping occurs as well. Honestly, this chapter is mostly about PG-13. Use your own discretion though, please.
> 
>  
> 
> **YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.**

Another few days, another few SHIELD/Hydra cells destroyed, it was almost getting predictable… but today, today might just be different. Steve grabbed his phone with hands that were just starting to shake, speed-dialing Natasha and waiting impatiently for her to answer. He was practically vibrating by the time she picked up. She had sent him a text hours before, while he’d been knee-deep in Hydra goons with Sam. Now, with the police and Tony handling the cleanup details, he could finally respond to her terse, _Call me. ASAP._ The lack of emoticon let him know it was urgent and serious. The fact that she’d sent a corresponding text to Sam that read, _Don’t let him do anything stupid,_ told him that this was it.

She had information that would lead to _Bucky_.

“I have a contact,” she stated immediately. “From before SHIELD. She’s a mercenary, works with all sorts, and… Bucky has been in touch with her.”

“Where?” Steve growled.

“North Carolina, but Steve – “

“ _What?_ ”

“I’m not the only one she sold this information to. _Hurry._ ”

…

Darcy looked around the cabin, having mixed feelings about the place. On the one hand it wasn’t exactly a 4-star establishment, but on the other it was better than a continuous parade of hotels, motels, and nights spent sleeping in the car while Bucky drove. He was getting twitchy about his contact and they would be staying, at most, another day or two. He was giving the mysterious contact another day to come through, and then they’d leave. Of course, between the present and that not-too-distant future, they had to eat. She’d sent him off for something vaguely fresh and easily portable – no sense wasting money on something that needed refrigerating if they were going to be leaving soon. She wasn’t sure if it was knowing that she was pregnant or just hating their current circumstances, but she was getting extremely tired of the moving around. One thing was for certain: there was no way she could handle _months_ of it. That was just not on.

Darcy had never thought very hard about Omega stereotypes one way or the other, but she’d spent the entire morning cleaning. She couldn’t quite decide if it was some sort of nesting instinct trying to kick in, or a reasonable reaction to the musty cabin. Either way, the place smelled almost overwhelmingly of cleaning products, and she’d need to air it out before Bucky returned. She meandered into the kitchen, hunting through the cupboards for the last of the tea, when she heard a sound.

Darcy grinned, turning, “You’re ba – “

“Hello, Ms. Lewis,” an unfamiliar man wearing an _all too familiar_ uniform said.

She took a breath to scream and jerked in surprise when a hand came from behind her to clamp over her mouth, a second simultaneously wrapping around her upper chest, holding her arms to her sides like a steel band.

 _No,_ she thought, feeling shock well up inside of her like blood from a wound.

“Where do you want her?”

_No, not again. **Please** , not again._

Goon #1 narrowed his eyes, considering. “Secure her in the bedroom.”

The broad hand still covering her lower face muffled her immediate protest. Goon #2 lifted her from the ground and started muscling her through the kitchen, causing Goon #1 to step back to avoid her kicking feet. She shrieked and struggled as much as she could and – surprisingly – it seemed the Goon was actually having a little trouble holding her.

“Should I sedate her?” Goon #2 questioned.

“No, we need her awake and capable of producing noise.”

Darcy went quiet instantly, staring at Goon #1. She felt horrible, helpless, because she had no way of knowing whether or not making noise was playing into his plans and no matter what she chose he was going to _act_ as if she was doing him a favor. She recognized the tactic, _he_ had used it.

He smiled at her. “You are exactly what we need to keep the asset in line, Ms. Lewis.”

_Fucker._

Goon #1’s smile turned into a smirk when he caught her glare. He stepped towards her, easily dodging her kicking legs until he was pressed against her front and she was sandwiched in between the two goons. Her skin positively _crawled_ at the feel of their hands on her, at the scent of sour aggression she was able to pick up over the cleaning products now that they were close. “If you do not make noise freely, Ms. Lewis, we will _make_ you,” the goon told her. He forced one hand low between their bodies till it rested with the palm on her stomach and raised a brow, “I’m sure we can find plenty to discuss. For instance, I believe congratulations are in order? Truly, your procedure succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

 _No, oh god, **no.**_ Her breath was coming faster and faster, beyond her control, and she could feel that haze – that _film_ forming and preparing to slip down. It had receded further and further during her time with Bucky, but not even a few weeks on the run in relative – always relative – safety with an Alpha who actually gave a shit could fully erase the time she’d spent with _him_ and its effects on her. She was losing herself by inches and she didn’t know how to stop it. No, wait, she could focus - _focus_ on something, _anything_.

Bucky. Bucky had gone to town. Bucky was coming back and he… he was _good_ at what he did, even if – as the saying went – what he did wasn’t very good. How many of the goons were there? How much support did they have waiting in the wings? If she stayed quiet and _listened_ she might learn something useful, something that would help her get them both out of this alive and intact. She had to believe that that was a possible outcome, _had to_ , or else –

Her breathing hitched and the edges of her vision went soft and orange-tinged.

Or else she was going to lose control, and any chance of being helpful.

_Keep it together, Darcy. Just keep it together._

Goon #2 bundled her into the bedroom and pinned her to the bed, crouching over her lower back. He made quick work of pinning her wrists together at the dip in her spine and lashing them together tightly. That done, he moved on to her ankles, then tied the two bindings together, leaving her trussed on her side and barely holding the pained, frightened whimpers back from escaping her chest. She focused on breathing evenly, deeply, shutting her eyes and listening as hard as she could to try and figure out what was going on, who was where, and _how many there were_.

It felt like forever – and like no time at all – before she heard the rumble of the car coming up the long drive, slowing, stopping, and then the door.

Darcy held herself so still and quiet that she didn’t even _breathe_.

Luckily, Goon #1 was loud: “Stand down, soldier.”

“I am _not_ your soldier,” Bucky snarled.

“You may want to rethink that,” the goon retorted, sounding smug. “Lane!”

Darcy flinched when Goon #2 stepped away from the door and towards her, a knife appearing in his hands from god-knows-where. She pressed her lips together as hard as she could, unwilling to give these assholes the _satisfaction_ \- but she couldn’t help the tiny whimper that escaped as he opened a line down her upper arm. The cut was shallow, but long enough that she could feel the sticky, wet, _warmth_ of the blood oozing down onto her shirt and beginning to make it cling to her torso. The goon stepped away from her then, to the door, and flung the knife in the direction of the front door.

It took only a moment for Bucky to snarl again.

 _He caught the scent,_ Darcy realized. _He can smell my blood. Fear, too, I’ll bet._ Still, she kept her mouth _shut_ , certain that any sound that escaped her and reached his ears would only distract him. Instead, she focused on rolling over so she could press her new wound into the bedspread, hopefully it would be enough to stanch some of the bleeding and make the smell… not quite as bad? Darcy bit her lip against the pain, which was sharp and new and _this wasn’t supposed to be her life_. She was supposed to be an assistant and the most dangerous thing she was supposed to have to deal with on a regular basis was Jane without her coffee. When did her life become secret agents and spies and _comic book crap?_ Oh, right, in New Mexico. Her rabbit moment: stay in the crazy, with the movers and shakers who will save and shape the world, or go back to normal. She’d chosen _this_ , but she hadn’t realized exactly what it would entail. This was not really the best time for navel-gazing introspection, but it was keeping her from panicking so maybe that was all right.

Darcy realized abruptly that it was silent out on the porch. Ominously so.

What was going _on_ out there?

…

Sam had wedged himself into the corner of the front seat opposite Steve and was holding onto the ‘oh shit’ bar for all he was worth. “This is a bad idea,” he said for what felt like the _thousandth time_. “We should wait, back-up isn’t _that_ far away – “

“ _Too far,_ ” Steve growled.

There was something incredibly disconcerting about hearing the normally gentle-voiced and mannered Steve _growl_. He’d seen the man in combat before today, repeatedly, but nothing brought out the Cap’s Alpha like Barnes and – by all accounts – Barnes was either _in_ trouble or about to be. He glanced over at Steve, noting the way his lip had curled and his pupils had dilated. _The battle-haze is starting already,_ he noted when he saw the tell-tale pink tinge in the blond's eyes. _Shit._

The phones beeped between them and, “What does Tony want?” Steve barked.

Sam grabbed his phone and quickly scanned the text. _Double shit._

Steve – who had probably heard his heart speed up – clenched his hands on the wheel. “ _Sam._ ”

“He caught footage of a couple of cars full of suspicious-looking folk… and another car, Barnes was driving it. They moved through town while Barnes was getting groceries, then Barnes left – and they were all headed in the same direction.”

A basso rumble was emanating from Steve’s chest, filling the car with the, frankly, _terrifying_ sound of his protective rage.

“Steve,” Sam said softly, “if we go in there, guns blazing – “

“I can’t guarantee your safety,” he bit out.

“What? No! That’s not the issue! The _girl_ , Steve, _Darcy Lewis._ I’ve seen what can happen when bondmates reunite with a family that has unexpectedly _grown_ while they were on tour. It’s not always pretty. Can you guarantee _her_ safety?”

The blond’s expression was… complicated. “I’m not going to attack her,” he said, and he _sounded_ certain. “I wouldn’t, not even – just. Not even then.”

“And if she _is_ bonded to Bucky?”

The muscles at the corner of his jaw started up a jerky, twitchy rhythm of clench and release. “I may… have _other_ instincts that will come into play,” he admitted.

Sam nodded, understanding. He'd seen the aftermath of _those_ instincts as well, and it wasn't always pretty. “You wanna risk it?”

Steve took his eyes off the road for a fraction of a second, meeting Sam’s gaze and showing him a world of anguish. “Do I have a choice?”

“There’s always a choice.”

He nodded, accepting that. “I’d rather take the chance that one or both hates me than have to mourn the death of a bondmate, and if Bucky bonded with her, her dying on his - _our_ \- watch… it’ll kill him.”

 _Yeah, but if the worst happens, are you prepared to accept what it’ll do to **you?**_ Sam couldn’t help but wonder. “Alright, Steve. I’m with you.”

Steve flinched and drove faster.

Three more turns, then down a twisting dirt road and they were breaking into a clearing with a cabin, a car, and a fight in progress. Sam barely had time to register four combatants and two men on the ground before Steve was grabbing his shield, opening the door, and diving out of the _still-moving_ car and into the fray.

 _Right,_ Sam thought, lunging across the seat to grab the wheel, _I’ll just park the car. You do your thing._

…

Darcy heard a few muffled thumps, and then a groaning noise. It was a surprisingly comforting sound because she was about 90% sure that Bucky was _inspiring_ those pained groans and not producing them himself. Goon #2 was looking increasingly twitchy. “I think,” she said helpfully, “that this is the part of the horror film where you open the door and then _wham_ , instant death. Just for the record? _I will cheer when you die._ ”

He sneered at her, but started fidgeting with his knife. She watched him get more and more obviously anxious as the fighting continued – and then there was the sound of a car pulling up fast and barely a moment later guns were added to the cacophony. Goon #2 grinned nastily. “Sounds like the cavalry arrived.”

There was a sound, one Darcy had never heard before, it started low and got louder and louder until she realized it was a _roar_ , one that set the hairs on her body standing straight up and reached directly to the back of her hindbrain and mashed the ‘flight’ response so hard she gave a full-body spasm, fighting the ropes. The goon looked just as spit-scared as she was so she mustered up a tremulous grin and asked, shaky-voiced, “You sure that that was _your_ cavalry?”

“Shut up, bitch,” he ordered, making a threatening step towards her.

Darcy made the executive decision to hide behind her Alpha and asked, quite seriously, “What, _exactly_ , do you think Bucky will do when he finds out that you’ve hurt me – you’ve made me _bleed?_ ”

He faltered for a moment, and she felt a brief hope, but then his countenance hardened. “You’re already bleeding,” he told her, taking another, more confident approach towards her, “can’t unslice your skin, but…” He smiled, “I can make sure I _earn_ whatever’s coming to me.”

_Oh shit, oh shit, I fucked up. **Hurry,** Bucky…_

…

 _Damn, they’re fast,_ Sam thought, watching in a mixture of awe and horror as Barnes and Steve tore through the low-level Hydra soldiers like they were paper people. They’d fallen into combat together almost seamlessly. He could see rough edges, fractions of a microsecond where they didn’t quite expect someone else that far up in their space while fighting hand-to-hand, but he had yet to see them actually falter. The three Hydra that Bucky had been fighting when they pulled up were on the ground by the time Sam got the car to a complete, _safe_ , stop, a process which took significantly longer than expected when Steve made a sound that froze everyone – including Sam – in terror. He’d never heard anything like that before, and he never wanted to again, but apparently it served its purpose: the Hydra soldiers were clearly spooked, and it threw them off their game, making them easy targets for the two super-soldiers.

Sam had watched Steve and Barnes stare at each other from across the bodies of those first few men, and then there were more Hydra melting out of the trees, surrounding them with guns and eager expressions and – was that a fucking _flamethrower?!_ Sam edged for the door and then, at some unseen signal, Barnes and Steve both _flew_ into action, the former letting out a blood-chilling howl as he tackled an elite. Now he was watching them fight, mesmerized by the pure brutal beauty of it… but there was another person to think of. If Barnes was out here, odds were good that the Lewis girl was in the cabin. He ducked a little in his seat to avoid drawing attention and quietly opened the car door that faced away from the fight. He managed only three steps before he went scared-rabbit still as the scents in the air registered.

Blood, fighting, Alpha aggression – about what he’d anticipated – he’d expected an Omega, too, but not a _pregnant_ one. Sam scrambled for the car and shut himself in, ducking down low in the backseat and grabbing a gun and his Stark phone, dialing Natasha as fast as his shaky fingers would allow. _This is why people have speed dial,_ he thought to himself, _for moments just – like – this!_

“We’re on our way,” Natasha answered the phone tersely. “We should be there in about twenty.”

“Pull back,” Sam said immediately. “Barnes and Rogers are already hazing like nothing I’ve ever seen before and unless you have the world’s best goddamn tranqs and you are _100% certain_ you can get these guys down in your first shot, _pull back_.”

“… Sam?”

“Lewis is _not_ just bonded, she’s _pregnant._ ”

The explosion of Russian curses was, he thought, entirely appropriate.

Also, kind of hot.

 _Not the time, Sam,_ he reminded himself. “If you can get here before they finish with the Hydra sold – “

“At this point, if they’re hazing, it is likely that they would only attack us,” Natasha said, sounding weary, “and if they have finished with Hydra, then Lewis – “

“There’s a cabin,” he interrupted. “Pretty sure that’s where they’re holding her.”

There was a muffled argument, and then, “Unfortunately, the world’s ‘best goddamn tranqs’ lose a lot of their efficacy if dispersed through the air and not directly into the bloodstream. Clint could probably make the shot, even through the cabin walls, but there’s too great of a chance he would hit Lewis and that would be… inadvisable considering Barnes and Rogers’s current states.”

“Also kind of the opposite of what we’re trying to do here,” he couldn't help but point out.

“That too.”

“So… what do we do?”

“ _We_ continue to come with what help we can bring, _you_ get somewhere safe,” she said sharply. “I know you have gotten close with Steve, but don’t take any chances, Sam. If one of them registers you as a threat in the state they’re in… Stay safe.”

“I am sitting in the car,” he said dryly. “Twiddling my thumbs.” Actually, now that he was paying attention, it sounded like the fighting was dying down – or, more accurately, the _dying_ was dying down. He twisted around and slowly peeked up over the car door to see – oh shit. Barnes and Steve were standing in the midst of at least ten, probably more like fifteen bodies, staring at each other. It did _not_ look like either of them had lost any of their aggression with the defeat of their mutual enemies, in fact, if he didn’t know any better, he’d say it looked like – 

Barnes lunged for Steve with a wild cry and the battle was on. They moved so quickly that it was difficult to tell exactly what was happening. It looked brutal, though – kicks, punches, teeth bared and no-holds-barred. There were, surprisingly, no weapons being used that Sam could see. Barnes’s knives were mostly sticking out of various Hydra foot soldiers and the Cap’s shield was still lying beside the last man it had taken out of commission. Suddenly, Steve did an odd sort of kick-flip that took him _behind_ Barnes, whereupon he wrestled him to the ground, riding him down while the brunet bucked like a bronco. Once down, he snarled something Sam couldn’t make out from his position of relative safety inside the car, ripped the neck of Barnes’s shirt, and then bit down on his shoulder, using his long hair as a grip to yank the man’s head to one side.

This, if anything, made Barnes’s struggles even _more_ intense. He got the metal arm beneath him and _shoved_ , the force sending _both_ men up into the air until they were fully vertical again. Barnes was prepared for this, looking near-boneless with the way he twisted like a goddamn cat in mid-air. He seized the wrist of the hand Steve had grabbed his hair with and did something fancy that probably involved pressure points to break his grip. His movements were now a little different, somehow, smoother in a way that reminded Sam oddly of the manner in which Natasha fought. He seemed to eel out of the way of Steve’s lunges, parrying by just not being where the blond expected him to be. It took only a few seconds for him to dodge a punch, incapacitate an arm, and get close enough to grab the back of Steve’s neck. Again, something that looked arcane but was probably mere super assassin science occurred, sending Steve crashing to his knees. Barnes lunged down, face first, and locked his teeth around Steve’s neck, latching on like a bulldog. It seemed that that was the end of it. Steve didn’t struggle, though he did lift his arms to carefully curl his hands over Barnes's forearms. They made an odd tableau: two Alphas kneeling, facing each other while - for all intents and purposes - embracing. It would have been almost picturesque were it not for the bodies lying all around them, the carnage of their recent battle.

At some unseen signal, Barnes released Steve and stood. Slowly, Cap followed, and they stood staring at each other, motionless, for just long enough that Sam started to hope they’d come out of whatever serum-enhanced battle-haze they’d fallen into. Then, as one, both men flinched, turning to the cabin and sprinting for it.

 _Rest in peace, Hydra soldier assigned to Darcy Lewis,_ Sam thought, torn between a certain satisfaction and reluctant pity. _You’re about to meet your Maker, and if you’re lucky you’ll get there **fast.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter could also be subtitled: IN WHICH AMUSE ATTEMPTS TO WRITE ACTION, or, IN WHICH SAM WILSON IS APPROPRIATELY TERRIFIED, or, IN WHICH STEVE ROGERS WILL JUMP ON ANY AVAILABLE GRENADE, or, IN WHICH SOMETIMES BEING A SMART-ASS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA, but the one I went with is ALSO pretty accurate.


	12. in which Darcy meets Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNINGS: ALL OF THE WARNINGS. THE TAGS COME INTO PLAY HERE. THIS IS THE CHAPTER I HAVE BEEN WARNING ABOUT FROM THE BEGINNING. RIGHT HERE.**  
>     
>  **Non-explicit warning: violence, non-con and dub-con sexual content. More explicit warning in the end notes, if you want it. ******

“You know,” Goon #2 said conversationally as he came towards Darcy, “they give out different ‘upgrades’ as incentives. Team leaders, higher-ups, they get the good shit. Guys like me? We’re lucky to get _anything_ , and we know it.” He reached out and grabbed her arm, flipping her over none-too-gently. Once turned, he poked at the cut he’d made, stroking his index finger down the gash with a curious look in his eyes. “Sometimes,” he continued, “I’d see a guy get tapped, and he’d be so excited, like fucking Christmas or something. Thing is, though, sometimes the guys on my level would get the good shit, and sometimes they’d get the experimental shit. The stuff they weren’t sure would work.”

Darcy watched him with wide eyes as he slipped onto the bed beside her. Then he maneuvered her around so that she was facing away from where he sat, leaving her bound arms within easy reach. She bit her lip and tried not to whimper when he pushed the tip of his finger _into_ her wound. _Fuck_ , it hurt.

“I saw a guy burn alive from the inside out, once. Hell of a thing. But that’s the bad shit; I’ve seen more of the good. Saw a guy get shot, punctured a lung. He stood up and kept fighting. It was a training exercise, but, well,” he chuckled, “that doesn’t always mean much. So, I wonder, which version did _you_ get? One of the good ones, yeah, but _which_ one?” He pinched the skin just at the top of the cut he’d made, “Well? Aren’t you curious?”

She curled her toes as hard as she could, trying to force a charley horse – some other pain she could focus on that would draw her attention away from what the goon was doing and _saying_.

“ _I’m_ curious, always have been - ”

“Well, you know what they say about curiosity,” she said hoarsely, barely able to get the words out past the urge to whine, whimper, _cry_ for Bucky.

Goon #2 leaned down so that his breath tickled her ear. “Like you said, I’m dead either way, so… _Meow._ ”

“You want your last act to be _this?_ ”

He grabbed her arm just above the elbow, stretching it back in a way that made Darcy’s shoulders ache. “Partially satisfied is better than eternally curious.”

“Great, I get the philosophical torturer.”

“Hydra’s full of thinkers.” She felt a flash of cold that set her body trembling as he passed the knife lightly across her arm just above where he held her still. He held the knife steady: not cutting, not yet, but she knew it was just a matter of time. “You gotta be a certain kind of stupid-smart to talk yourself into joining.”

“I’m confused, are you calling yourself stupid, or smart?”

“Me? Nah, I just like to hit things,” he said, punctuating the sentence by pressing down on the knife just slowly enough that she could _feel_ her skin splitting. This cut was shorter, but it hurt more – she could only assume it was deeper.

She inhaled sharply, fighting down the sound that was building.

“In case you were curious, that first cut I made? Barely bleeding anymore. Lets go a little _deeper…_ ” He twisted the knife and it _scraped_ something – something hard, and –

Darcy clenched her mouth shut, lips pressing together to muffle the sound, but she couldn’t help but shout this time.

“Shush,” Goon #2 said, sounding exasperated, “you know it’ll heal.”

She was gulping air, trying so hard, so _fucking_ hard, to keep in control. Everything was going blurry at the edges, the whimpers were climbing up her throat in spite of her every attempt to stop them, and at this point every breath she took ended on a slight whine. She knew that if she tried to speak, all that would come out were mewling cries. Darcy could feel the haze starting to descend on her brain, preparing to send her beyond control, beyond reason, to the place where instinct was king… but she couldn’t run from this, she couldn’t fight it, all she could do was lie there and bleed.

There was a sudden, thunderous crash, and then Darcy was crying out in shock as a large blur broke through the wall and leapt over her. Simultaneously, a second blur went through the upper edge of her field of vision and back out of sight. Behind her, she heard a startled exclamation, a meaty crack, a loud thump and then… nothing. No sound but that of her own breaths, labored and laden down with whines. She trembled, staring at the hole in the wall, through which she could see the kitchen. She jumped when a warm hand – a hand she _recognized_ \- entered her field of vision, slipping under the cheek resting on the mattress and leaving a wrist pressed lightly up against her nose and mouth.

Darcy inhaled the scent of _Bucky:_ he was _Alpha_ and _safe_ and _blood_ and _satisfaction_.

She felt the faint coolness of his metal hand tracing around the edges of her wounds, then down to the zip ties that held her hands together. They were quickly snapped, then she felt the same thing at her feet, all the while she pressed her face against his wrist and _breathed:_ soaking his smell in and letting it soothe her brain back down from the edge it had been in the process of cresting. Slowly, her breathing began to even out again, slowing. Darcy held still, content to lie there and let herself be soothed, right up until a _third_ and then a _fourth_ hand came into play.

Bucky’s flesh wrist was still pressed to her nose, his metal hand gently curling her abused arm back into a position that _didn’t_ make her shoulders strain, but there were two _other_ hands straightening her legs. It was impossible to tense up with her Alpha so close and smelling like _that_ , but that didn’t mean she could relax entirely as those unknown hands rubbed feeling back into her feet and ankles.

She whined questioningly, and was answered with two soft almost-growls that made something in her upper back and down her spine go loose and pliant. Bucky slowly moved his hand away from her face, pausing every few inches to wait for a protest that never came. He curled his flesh hand under her shoulder so he could lift and turn her, sliding onto the bed and pulling her back to rest against his chest in one smooth motion that also made her face the owner of the second pair of hands.

Darcy blinked rapidly as Captain America – Steve Rogers – came into view. He had a smear of blood high on his forehead, dripping down his cheek. There was a large, livid bite mark on his neck and various other small bleeding wounds dotting his person. He was watching her every bit as closely as she was watching him, with eyes so dilated they were nearly black and an intensely focused look on his face. His eyes, though, on second glance they were glazed slightly and tinged pink with -

_Oh, oh **shit** , he’s in a haze, he **must** be._

She pressed herself back against Bucky as Steve began to crawl up the bed, towards her. His eyes kept shifting from hers to the side, where Bucky’s face likely was, and he stopped once he was kneeling between her knees. Darcy held herself very, very still, opened her mouth and – a whine came out, _fuck_. She pushed against Bucky’s arms, trying to turn to face him, but he clamped down, holding her still. When she turned back again, Steve was closer, leaning forward so his face was on a level with hers. She froze under his scrutiny, took a deep breath, and – oh, oh _god_. He was _Alpha-smell_ and _blood_ and _aggression_ and a scent of _satisfaction_ that was, if possible, even more pronounced than Bucky’s, he _smelled_ like Bucky and Bucky smelled like him. _The bite_ , she realized, _they reaffirmed the claim, that’s why you didn’t notice Steve’s smell right away, they’re blending._

Bucky used his metal hand to maneuver her injured arm around to curl across her front. It still hurt but the Goon had been correct: she was already healing, and much more quickly than she ought to be. It was painful, still a bad injury, but she didn’t think it would take longer than a week, maybe two, to be fine. She probably wouldn’t even scar.

Steve’s upper lip drew back over his canines in a snarl as he stared at the blood slowly coagulating on her skin. He reached out and pulled her arm gently towards him, running his nose along the path the goon’s knife had taken before letting out a soft, pleased-sounding grunt. Starting at the bottom of the first cut, he flicked his tongue lightly and quickly over the skin, just enough to brush saliva across the wound but not enough to aggravate it. Darcy held still, watching him in confusion as he treated each of the three injuries the same way before returning her arm to her and positively _radiating_ satisfaction.

If she’d been capable of speech, she’d have offered a somewhat _sarcastic_ thank you; as it stood she had to settle for pointedly raised brows, which were lost on the feral Alpha. Steve brushed his hands over the reddish marks from where the goon had been holding her - wait. _The goon_. What had happened to Goon #2? She turned her head and looked at the other side of the room: the goon was lying there, eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. His neck was twisted at an impossible angle as was - _oh god_ \- his _spine_. Darcy keened in the back of her throat, shrinking back against Bucky until a low growl from Steve snapped her attention back to him. Without conscious thought, her head dropped back onto Bucky’s shoulder, exposing her throat and bonding bite to the blond Alpha.

There was a rush of warm air as Steve leaned close, breathing in her scent, and then a second warmth: wet and slick as he laved her bonding bite with his tongue. She tried to flinch away, but Bucky had slipped a hand into her hair, holding her head still while Steve licked until his tongue had reached everywhere Bucky’s teeth had been. Once satisfied, he drew away a little, his nose trailing down the center of her chest until he leaned in to rest his forehead against the lowest curve of her ribcage. He buried his face against her stomach and sucking in air like a man who’d been on the verge of drowning, a low, steady rumble beginning to emanate from him, almost like a purr.

After a few moments of this, his hands moved from the mattress to her knees, sliding up her thighs. Darcy yelped in surprise, pushing against back against Bucky and away from Steve, but twin growls made her freeze. Bucky lowered his face to her neck, breathing over the still-wet patches that Steve had licked, while the blond lifted his head from her stomach to look her in the eye.

 _Oh, **shit** ,_ Darcy thought. The aggression-scent emanating from the two Alphas in the room had dramatically lessened, replaced by a similar smell, one Darcy recognized from her heat: this was Alpha in rut. This was Alpha preparing to _claim_. Steve’s eyes were still faintly pink, the haze holding him beyond reason. She started struggling in earnest, working through her own reluctance to fight her Alpha, trying to speak, to vocalize, to say _something_ to break the two Alphas out of the haze.

 _’Slow moving Steve,’_ she thought, with no small degree of panicked hilarity, _sure, in **normal** circumstances, why the hell did I think I’d get to have anything approaching normal?_ It was clear that the battle-haze the two Alphas had slipped into in their defense of her (on Bucky’s part) and each other (on Steve’s) had shifted: they had fought for their bond, now they had only to complete it. _This is willy-nilly,_ she tried to say, but it only came out as a somewhat-frantic mewl. _Goddamnit, this is the very **definition** of throwing me into a three way bond willy-nilly!_

Bucky moved then, shifting his weight forward while he held her against his chest until he could edge across the bed to push her into Steve. Sandwiched between the two men, unable to get free, it was a parody of what she’d experienced with the Hydra agents only – what? – perhaps fifteen minutes past, maybe less. Bucky slipped the hand in her hair closer to her scalp and gently but firmly directed her face towards the bite on Steve’s neck, holding her steady until she started to breathe in the combined smells of the two Alphas.

It made her dizzy, smelling the two of them together. She’d found Bucky potent, near intoxicating, when she’d first met him, and she was sure that Steve on his own was equally as compelling. Together, though? An involuntary whine escaped her throat, and this one was _not_ a protest. It wasn’t possible for her to muster up the level of resistance she wanted to put forth, not with her own haze so close, Bucky’s smell telling her all was well, and Steve’s blending in so _perfectly_ , like it was meant to be there all along. Like _he_ was meant to be there all along.

Steve’s arms came up around her, replacing Bucky’s and then turning her so that she was facing the brunet. She felt kind of like a party favor for a moment, until she got her first glimpse of Bucky and the seriousness of her situation was driven home past her shield of sarcastic internal commentary. Bucky was sporting a similar bloody bite mark on his shoulder and his face was deadly serious: intent in a way she hadn’t seen since she’d first met him back in the Hydra base. His focus was different this time around, though no less sharp, and his eyes had the same faint pink tinge that Steve’s did. He was fully in haze, as driven by his instinctual drives as she’d been three days into her heat. This was inevitable, it was going to be one more thing in the list of ‘new experiences’ she’d gone through in the last month or so that she didn’t get to choose, but would have to live with, _deal with_ , somehow.

There was one choice remaining to her, one she considered seriously as Steve lowered his hand to the elastic waistband of her sweats and Bucky reached for her shirt: that film, the one that would make her as hazy as they were, was still hanging there at the edges of her mind. At this point she was only holding it back through pure, grim determination. She could give in to it, and let this all be a blur, or she could take the chance that she might remain in her current strange in-between state where she couldn’t speak, but could still think. Darcy didn’t think she wanted to remember this as more than a blur, and so she reached out and welcomed the haze whole-heartedly.

She blinked, and suddenly the edges of her vision were misty, orange, and dim. _Her_ Alpha was watching her carefully while a second divested her of her clothing. She was confused: this was… wrong and not wrong? Her nose told her that this blond Alpha also belonged to _her_ Alpha, and therefore to her as she to him, but something else, something quiet and niggling at the back of her mind said _no_ and _not right_. The conflicting impulses made her whine raggedly, wriggling against the second Alpha’s hold. Immediately, _her_ Alpha was there, pressing close and soothing her with his smell, his presence, skin-on-skin quickly followed by his lips on the bite that marked them mates.

Their clothing was gone in moments. Her Alpha’s soothing rumbles and soft touches distracted her from the process. She shivered when the second Alpha’s skin, so hot against her own, pressed against her. She instinctively moved forward, into her own Alpha, but he only pushed closer to her: crowding her back so that she was pressed tightly between the two. Delicately, he pressed his teeth to the bite on her neck, biting down at the same time that he brushed a hand over the curls at the apex of her thighs. She shivered under the dual attentions, still torn between reassurance at her Alpha’s touch and her internal struggle over the blond Alpha’s presence. Her Alpha pet her gently, circling her entrance with the pad of his index finger while he alternated between gently biting her and laving the faint teeth-marks with his tongue.

In short order, she was quivering under his attentions, gulping air and grabbing for something - anything – to ground her. Her Alpha was not giving her the constancy that she craved at this point, teasing her with his teeth but never exerting the pressure that she _needed_. Her hands scrabbled for purchase and ended up grabbing onto warm flesh subtly different from what she was used to: the second Alpha. He seemed to take her touch as permission, slowly moving his hands from where they’d been pressed to her sides and taking to rubbing them up and down from her hips to just below her breasts. She gasped once at the warmth, and then again when there was a corresponding increase in the Alpha musk that filled the room.

Her Alpha was keeping up a constant, rumbling purr. He dipped the tips of his fingers into her, rubbing gently, then drew the wetness he found up, to circle at her clit until she whined and tried to pull back – too much, too fast, _too intense_. He nuzzled her neck in response, then drew away entirely, reaching up to stroke both hands down her arms until he reached her wrists and encircling them loosely with his own, much larger, hands. That was when she felt the second Alpha shift, both of _his_ hands moving down to cup her hips and lift. There was a moment of disorientation and discomfort at being so off-balance. Then she was distracted by the feel of a large, blunt warmth sliding against her cunt.

She jerked against her Alpha’s hold, staring at him while he just looked calmly back. He was still keeping up that soothing purr, his eyes an odd mix of black and pink in the dimly lit room. Her eyes remained locked on his as that seeking head caught at the mouth of her cunt and started pressing inexorably in. She was shuddering, shaking at the feeling, wet but not stretched at all: it was a smooth glide and a struggle all at once. The purring kicked up a notch, now coming from two chests, rumbling from before and behind her until she felt almost as if she was floating on a cushion of sound.

And still, the cock at her entrance kept pushing up, and in, more and more of it, slowly and steadily, until finally, her ass rested in the second Alpha’s lap. He slid his hands from her hips to her thighs and gently rubbed them, firmly stroking the muscles until they went pliant under the steady pressure. Her breathing was labored, her heart racing as she adjusted. Her Alpha gently transferred one wrist so that both were held firmly in one of his hands, lifting the other to stroke her hair. She pushed her face into his palm, grounding herself with his scent as much as she could. The other Alpha remained still, save for the stroking of his hands and the occasional twitch within her.

It was impossible to gauge time, but it passed as she gradually adjusted to his girth. Her body must have relaxed in some way, or some signal was passed between the two Alphas, because the second returned his hands to her hips to hold fast and started to move. He did not thrust, exactly, he held her steady as he rocked: a small motion that made it feel as though he was deliberately stroking her walls with every inch he used to fill her. It felt like – she needed – it was good, _so_ good, but it wasn’t _enough_ , not yet.

She pulled against her Alpha’s hand on her wrists, but he wouldn’t budge. She tried to toss her head, to move, to do _something_ , she knew not what, but her Alpha instantly grabbed a thick handful of her hair, tugging gently till she exposed her neck and then – oh. _Oh_.

The second Alpha’s breath was hot and eager, coming fast as he rubbed his barely-parted lips over the bonding bite that she already wore. She pulled again on her Alpha’s hold, this was not – something was not right. She tried to shake her head, but her Alpha’s grip tightened past the point of immobility until it flirted with true pain. Something hot and burning pressed at the space behind her eyes until it started leaking down her cheeks. She keened, legs starting to kick, to try to get purchase even as her squirming pressed the second Alpha’s cock still further inside her, but he pushed down _hard_ on her thighs and held her still. Caught by the arms and hair, legs immobilized by the blond Alpha’s immense strength, she was stuck.

She sought _her_ Alpha’s gaze, letting out a begging plea for aid: she didn’t know what was wrong, only that something was and she could – she _should_ \- be able to expect her Alpha to fix it. Her whine trailed into a moan as the second Alpha used her distraction to lever her up and truly _thrust_ for the first time. She could feel every inch where it pressed against her and slid out, stroking along her walls, then back in, even faster, punching the air from her lungs with the shock of pleasure. All thought, everything but the sensation was chased from her head by the feeling as he did it again, and again, and _again._ Each time it was more, and harder, and better, building on itself until she was straining against their hold again, reaching for that peak. She felt the base of the Alpha’s cock begin to swell, catching at the mouth of her cunt with every thrust until he bucked up, hard, driving his knot in and sinking his teeth into her neck at the same time.

 _No_ , came from somewhere, and she fought, her struggles turning into paroxysms or pleasure as the sensations: his teeth in his neck, the knot swelling inside her, her hips driving against his cock, combined to hurl her over the edge.

When she came back to herself, both of her Alphas were rumbling happily, stroking their hands over her skin while she lay limply against the one still locked inside her. Her Alpha’s metal hand was delightfully cool in comparison with the three flesh hands they collectively sported, but the combined stroking was doing its job: bringing her heart rate back down and preparing her to rest while they waited for the knot to contract back down to normal. She could feel his spending inside of her, it tickled a little as they gently wrapped her in their arms and rolled her to her side to wait, and rest.

She hummed, leaning her head back against her Alpha’s shoulder to nuzzle him. There had been something… She remembered it vaguely: an elusive worry in the back of her mind.

It wasn’t important now.

…

“Think they’re done?” Clint asked speculatively, his blasé tone at odds with the way his fingers fidgeted with the grip of his bow.

“God, I hope so,” Sam said fervently.

Natasha said nothing, but her continuous pacing had begun to wear a line in the grass in front of them.

The duo had arrived ten minutes prior. Sam had, after a small amount of coaxing, left the relative safety of the truck to join them at their vantage point some fifty yards further away. He was, at first, not sure how to act around them: Clint he didn’t know, and Natasha had been different lately (or it was possible, _probable_ , that he was imagining it). That quickly fell by the wayside as the tension of the situation hit everyone at once: their friend and occasional team leader was inside that building with his long lost bondmate and a friend-of-a-friend who had been caught in the crossfire of a conflict that spanned _decades_ , having bonding sex while out of their minds on instinct and science-enhanced hormones. This was bizarre and uncomfortable by anyone’s standards.

“Does this count as sex pollen?” Clint asked after a moment.

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: _there’s no such thing as sex pollen_ ,” Natasha sighed. Sam could believe it had been a thousand times, the words had to tenor of an old argument, often revisited. It seemed to be doing the trick though, she had stopped pacing and faced them. Her face was still and grim, eyes pinched at the corners and nostrils flaring every few seconds as if she was trying to catch the scent of the trio in the cabin.

“But if there was, you wouldn’t tell me about it,” the archer pointed out. “So I’m going to go on believing that it’s real.”

“Is it?” Sam couldn’t help but ask. Although he welcomed the distraction, he wasn’t sure if he really wanted the answer to his question.

Natasha slanted him a disbelieving look. “Not you, _too._ ”

Her exasperation was enough to push Clint over that fine line of strain and into laughter.

Sam was pretty sure he’d missed something.

“ _One of us,_ ” Natasha began, speaking loudly to be heard over Clint’s dwindling chuckles, “needs to get close enough to check on them. I have the best senses, but I’m also the one they’re most likely to attack.”

Sam blinked at that, and then frowned, squinting at the duo. To him, they both smelled like your average Beta, but then, his sense of smell had never really been the strongest. He knew that Alphas usually had better senses, and could only imagine that _serum_ -enhanced Alphas were even moreso, so what was she worried about them picking up on? “We don’t have anything that can take ‘em down,” he pointed out. It was the only thing that had stopped them from storming the cabin.

“Stark is sending us a gift basket,” Clint said, now calmed down enough for normal speech.

“How?”

As if waiting for a cue, a small robot fell from the sky, a tiny repulsor slowing its descent when it was about fifty feet above them. Sam was the only one who flinched, so the other two had either heard it coming, or expected it. “Thanks, guys,” he said while the bot whistled and beeped as it came in for its landing. “Really appreciate the heads-up.”

“You’ll learn,” Clint said, eyes crinkling a little at the corners.

Natasha cuffed the archer lightly on the shoulder on her way over to the chirruping bot. “Stark and Banner were working on some sort of tranq… they only needed a few more adjustments, so, this should do it.” She popped something free of the bot, then they all watched as the tiny thing _bowed_ to them, then powered up and flew away. “Why does everything have to have a personality,” she muttered, seemingly to herself.

“So, who’s going?” Clint asked, suddenly all business: upright and battle ready. “Him, or me?”

The redhead narrowed her eyes, studying the both of them. “Sam,” she said slowly, “is probably the least likely to be perceived as a threat.”

“Also the least prepared.”

“Hey!” Sam said, “I’ve been traveling with the Cap for days, I think I know at least a _little_ of what he’s capable of.” He paused, rubbing his chest as he remembered that _roar_. “More than a little,” he said. “Man’s goddamn terrifying when he wants to be.”

The two spies exchanged a speaking look.

“What?”

“Wait till you meet Banner,” Natasha said.

“ _Hulk_ ,” Clint amended.

“Hulk, too,” she agreed.

“You people are _all_ a little terrifying,” Sam sighed.

“ _You people?_ ” Clint echoed, a faint smile beginning. “Don’t you know you’re one of us, now?”

“If you start chanting _one of us, one of us_ , I’m out,” Sam warned.

Clint got a sour look on his face and Natasha actually _snorted_ , her face showing something other than tension and worry for the first time since she’d arrived. “That movie is grossly inaccurate,” the archer said stiffly, which made the redhead _smile_. It was a small one, but it was there.

Now thoroughly confused, Sam shook his head and tried to get them back on track. “All right, so, we’ve got… whatever that is. Now what?”

“Now we sleep-gas everybody in the cabin so we can give them the _real_ nighty-night drugs to get them back to Stark Tower. By the time we get there they should have everything ready for their, ah, _nesting period_.”

“You really think they’ll still have one, with everything that just happened?” Sam asked skeptically.

Clint and Natasha exchanged another of those looks. “While normally the answer would be ‘no,’ the serum is a game-changer. I doubt any of the three of them will be fully aware for a few days. It’s best for all concerned if we keep them safely contained, _together_ and _away from others_ until the haze fully wears off,” Natasha explained.

“Trauma, trauma, trauma,” Sam muttered, staring at the cabin.

“Amen, brother,” Clint said. “So, flip you for it?”

Sam rolled his eyes, grabbed the doohickey out of Natasha’s hand, and started for the cabin. All he had to do was make sure the trio was done with their business, arm the gadget, and run like heck. He was relatively confident he could do that with a minimum of fuss, but he wasn’t going to say or do anything to jinx himself. He wasn’t an idiot.

“You were right,” he heard Clint say, presumably to Natasha. “I _do_ like him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING FOR VIOLENCE: knife violence, torture. If you would like to skip the torture, but want everything else, start reading at, _There was a sudden, thunderous crash…_**
> 
>  
> 
> **WARNING FOR: graphic non-con and dub-con. If you would like to skip the sex, but want everything else, STOP reading at, _She blinked, and suddenly the edges of her vision…_ You can start reading again at, _“Think they’re done?”_**
> 
>  
> 
> Please remember the golden rule: You Kink Is Not My Kink And That's Okay.
> 
>  
> 
> HAPPY INTERNATIONAL FAN WORKS DAY!


	13. in which Tony plays nice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka, "in which there is a lot of dialogue" or "in which some exposition is delivered awkwardly" or "in which we see a few more reactions" or "in which Pepper is a BAMF (but that goes without saying)"

Tony was not sure what he’d been expecting from the “honeymooners,” but it certainly wasn’t what he got. If he’d laid bets (and he’d tried to start a pool, but then Pepper said “No” in _that tone_ ) he would have had money on the two Alphas attempting to bust their way out while Lewis holed up in the safest, smallest space she could find. He ended up _partially_ right. Sort of.

Steve and Bucky – and even knowing that the latter had spent the past seventy years a brainwashed cyborg assassin for Hydra, Tony still couldn’t overcome a childhood of idolizing the Commandos enough to think of the man as “Barnes”, let alone the “Winter Soldier” – _had_ been all snarls and tense pacing for about the first twenty minutes after they’d woken up. Steve had explored the entire space allotted to them – one suite rapidly converted for their use - while Bucky stuck to the perimeter, checking for escapes, presumably, and getting progressively more tightly wound as his search turned up nothing. By the time they were finished, Bucky’s eyes were almost red… but Steve had calmed considerably. Tony had watched in surprise and pleasure when Cap had found the “scent basket” Pepper had insisted they leave in one of the cupboards. It held items with the scents of everyone on the team, Pepper, Foster, and Selvig. Steve had frozen for a full minute on finding the basket, then relaxed all at once.

He recognized them, even in his hazed state. What’s more, he _trusted_ them.

Tony was not at all moved by this. Really.

Steve brought the basket back with him when he met back up with Bucky and pushed the whole collection at the other Alpha with a reassuring murmur. Bucky had eyed the basket and his fellow Alpha with suspicion until Steve wrapped himself around the other man and _purred_ what could only be some sort of ‘all clear’ message. Tony would never get over seeing _Bucky Barnes_ practically wearing _Steve Rogers_ like a coat. It was a picture that would have made him Internet famous – if he wasn’t already. After that, they returned to their Omega, who was still unconscious because that tranq-bomb had been _strong_ and she wasn’t a supersoldier like them.

At least, she hadn’t been enhanced _before_ her little involuntary vacation with Hydra. Even the files they’d recovered from the lab had been cagey on what, precisely, they’d used on Darcy Lewis. There were at least fifty serum variants listed within the system, along with a whole host of other projects, and probably more that were paper-only. Bruce was running every test he could think of on the trio’s blood, carefully collected while they were unconscious.

Tony was monitoring the newly bonded _situation_. Well, JARVIS was the one doing the actual monitoring, but he’d been instructed to let Tony know if they were doing something interesting or alarming. If there’d been betting, he would have lost even more money on Darcy Lewis, pregnant Omega and reluctant (?) mate of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. He would have expected her to cower, maybe even cry a little: the girl had been through hell over the last month or so. Instead, when she at last awoke she merely sat up, sniffed, then looked around until she’d established exactly where her Alphas were, before finally rolling over and going back to sleep.

It was anticlimactic, to say the least.

Considering all the ruckus they’d stirred up trying to find Bucky and Darcy, and then to round up all _three_ and get them to the Tower, Tony had expected much worse from his guests. They were, and continued to be, surprisingly quiet. The real noisemakers were the _other_ newcomers: Foster, Selvig, and Thor. All three had come to his Tower incredibly concerned over their missing friend, and all three had reacted poorly when news of what she had endured reached them.

Finding out that Steve had spontaneously bonded with her in the immediate aftermath of a fight with Hydra goons had not exactly gone over well. Foster had swelled up with rage, eyes practically glowing and small fists shaking before she carefully, _visibly_ calmed herself, seeming to fold all her anger back into a tightly contained ball of fury.

“I would like to see them,” she’d told Tony, her tone and the _overwhelming_ aggression-scent that the diminutive Alpha was leaking made it clear that it wasn’t a _request_.

He’d flicked a screen and put the vid-link from the honeymoon suite on the wall.

The trio had, once Lewis awoke _properly_ , rearranged themselves and then settled into a pattern of sorts. Lewis alternated between staying in their shared bed and sitting on the couch while the two Alphas orbited around her: at least one always within arms reach, even while the other attended to any needs that arose. Bucky was still walking a perimeter every so often, and would – seemingly without thinking about it – tuck blankets around the two others anytime they settled long enough on a flat surface. Steve seemed focused on keeping his two bondmates well fed: he always had a bottle of water and some sort of bread roll at hand. Lewis seemed focused on resting, probably still recovering from everything, but would frequently pull one – or both – Alphas into her nest of blankets (provided by Bucky) and food (provided by Steve) and curl around, or over, them.

It was this image that appeared on the wall. Lewis was sprawled over the two Alphas on the bed, Steve and Bucky curled towards each other while she had her head on Bucky’s stomach and her legs thrown over Steve’s hips. Steve was awake, and propping himself up on one arm the better to watch the other two as they slept, a soft smile on his face.

“Okay,” Foster said, letting out a slow breath. The aggression-scent eased off somewhat (thank god). “You will let me know the _instant_ one of them _really_ wakes up,” she informed him, and then stalked out.

“My Jane has informed me of some of your customs,” Thor said, looking troubled. “I would not have thought it of our friend, that he could be so – “ He appeared to be struggling for the right word before finally settling on, “Base. This thing he has done – “

“Whoa, whoa there big guy – he didn’t exactly _choose_ it,” Tony had defended, not actually sure why he was arguing. From what Wilson – Sam – had told him, Steve had at least had some idea of what might happen, but he’d gone in regardless. “It’s not – this kind of thing,” he grimaced. “Some of it is beyond our control.”

“To be so ruled by instinct – “ Thor had started again.

“We’re not. Not usually, at least,” he interrupted, yet again. He sighed. “A lot of people call them the three F’s: fighting, fright, and fucking. The first two don’t usually come out unless the circumstances are extreme, like,” he said with a pointed look at Thor, “reuniting with your lost bondmate and finding them under attack, lets not even _go into_ all the other stuff that makes Steve and Bucky fodder for box office gold. Anyways, most of the time, for _most_ people, haze is something you hear about, not experience. I mean, everybody’s gotta deal with heats and ruts, but that’s a whole other thing. Connected though, I guess.” Seeing that Thor still looked confused, he groaned, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Bruce could explain it better. Or Pepper. Yeah, Pepper would be good, too. Okay, go to Bruce for the biology and Pep for the sociology. I’m no good at talking about this kind of crap, but you don’t really need to worry: your girlfriend’s not about to go all pink-eyed and teeth-baring anytime soon, she doesn’t seem the type.”

When, two days later, Thor returned to ask to look in on his friends again, it seemed that his primary worries had been assuaged, only for a whole new host to take their place. “This relationship,” he said slowly, “it will be… even? I would not see one I care for considered an afterthought to Steve’s ‘epic romance’.”

“Did somebody let you near a tabloid?” Tony wondered. “Or the Internet?”

Thor gave him a Look.

“Didn’t I tell you to go to _Pepper_ with the squishy feelings bits?” he muttered, mostly to himself. “That’s not how bonding… works. Exactly. It’s…” He thought of his mother and father, married but never bonded. He thought about his relationship with Pepper: from boss/employee to friends and lovers, so many reasons not to bond until Extremis changed it all again. He thought about all the many relationships he’d seen over the years, both bonded and bondless. “It’s complicated,” he said. “You have marriage? On Asgard?”

“Of course.”

“We do, too. Marriage is a contract, it starts on paper, it’s written with ink, and maybe it becomes more, but it can be broken or set aside. Bonding… bonding starts with fire and blood, it’s written on your skin,” he reached up, fingers resting against the faint ridges of Pepper’s bite. “It doesn’t end. Your bondmate – or mates, if that’s what you’re into - is part of you, forever. Steve and Bucky might have history. History and history _books_ , hell, they’ve got _movies_ … not helpful, right. My point is! They have all of that, yes, but Lewis – Darcy, I guess – she’s now as much a part of them as they are of each other. I’m not gonna promise you it’ll always be pretty, but… I don’t think they’ll do wrong by her?” Tony grimaced because _squishy feelings bullshit_ , but continued, haltingly: “They’re… good men. At least we know Steve is. Bucky has been through the wringer, but I doubt – I can’t believe he’d - _ugh_.” He gave the blond a plaintive look, “Seriously, couldn’t you go to Pepper with this?”

Thor gave him a small smile. “You do yourself too little credit, my friend.”

Tony blinked. “I think you’re the first person to ever say that to me.”

The Asgardian laughed, clapped him on the back (he barely managed to keep his feet), and left – worries assuaged for the moment.

Truthfully, of the three, Selvig was the worst. It was clear that he had not yet managed to fully recover from what had happened with the Tesseract and Loki. Half the time he still couldn’t be bothered to wear pants. Still, even as scattered as he was, he managed to track Tony down every day, sometimes more than once. Every time it started the same way: he stood there, hovering and wringing his hands in an absentminded sort of way while he leaked the smell of stress until Tony finally acknowledged him.

“Darcy?” he’d ask, eyes hopeful but mouth tilted down at the corners.

Tony would pull up the feed for him and together they would watch the Omega and her two Alphas for five minutes, or ten, until Selvig’s stress was replaced by contentment and he wandered off again. On good days he would leave with science on his mind, on bad days he worried about the baby. Which was fair, Tony also spent a fair amount of time thinking about the baby. The _supersoldier_ baby that had, according to the Hydra files, been the entire point of the hell they’d put those poor Omegas through.

They’d pieced together more of what had happened, specifically, to Darcy. It wasn’t pretty. It was, in fact, bad enough that it brought tears to Pepper’s eyes when he told her. He immediately regretted telling her.

“No, no,” she assured him, dashing the tears from her face. “It’s good. This is – I’m glad you told me.” Her face crumpled, “That poor girl…”

Tony nodded. “She seems pretty resilient? From what Thor and Foster – “

Pepper raised her brows at him pointedly.

“Fine, from what Thor and _Jane_ have told me, she was pretty unphased by aliens, gods, monsters, and the potential end of life as we know it. This should be a piece of – “ The end of his sentence was muffled by Pepper’s palm. He wrapped a hand around her wrist and tugged it down. “Something I said?”

“Tony,” Pepper said, looking both fond and exasperated – his favorite look – “She could be the most unflappable woman in the _world_ and this would still probably phase her.”

“Flap her?” he interjected.

“She was _tortured_ ,” she continued, ignoring him. “They were trying to force a trauma-bond and then – then she actually _was_ bonded, and got pregnant, and then bonded _again_ …” Pepper shook her head, “That poor girl – “

“She’s twenty-four,” he reminded her.

“That poor _young woman_. She’s going to need someone to talk to,” the redhead said, brow furrowing.

Tony stared. He knew that face, he was _intimately familiar_ with that face. That was Pepper’s planning face. “Well,” he said slowly, “she’s got Fos-Jane, I meant to say _Jane_ \- “

“No, Tony, she’s going to need to talk to a professional. In fact, James probably will, too.”

“Not Steve?” he threw in, half-kidding.

Pepper frowned, thinking. “No, you’re right, Steve will, too. Hmm… James will probably be more comfortable with someone he knows, or, barring that, someone that Steve is also comfortable with. They could probably share a therapist, but Darcy will need her own. They’ll need to be experienced with this sort of thing – “

“Superheroes? Mad science? Bad romance novel plots?”

“ _Trauma-bonds_ , Tony. We’ll probably need someone experienced with veterans, too. If our resident soldiers aren’t suffering from some sort of PTSD, I will eat my entire shoe collection… But maybe it’s more important that they make a connection? We should interview a variety. I think I have some NDAs from your last attempt at therapy – “

“Which _you_ insisted on,” Tony pointed out. “I still don’t see why JARVIS doesn’t count, he’s read everything.”

“But you _made_ him, he’s hardly an impartial voice. No offense, JARVIS.”

“None taken, madam.”

“Besides, I doubt any of them would be comfortable talking with him… no offense, JARVIS.”

“Miss Potts, I would like to take this moment to remind you that I was created by, and spend the majority of my processing power on, Tony Stark. I am not easily offended.”

“… I feel like _I_ should be,” Tony muttered.

Pepper rolled her eyes. “So, it’s decided: tomorrow we start interviewing potential therapists.”

“We decided that? When? I don’t remember agreeing to bring headshrinkers into my Tower.”

“JARVIS? Will you start looking for candidates?”

“I have already begun compiling a shortlist, madam.”

“Excellent. And relax, Tony,” she said, giving him a wry look. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll see to it that they stick to my 12% of the Tower.”

He sighed. “I knew that was going to come back to haunt me…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I hit a bit of a slump with this fic for a while, for many reasons. At this point Rainne has talked me back into the I WILL WRITE THE STORY I WANT TO WRITE mindset (thank you, Rainne). Luckily, based on the majority of the reviews, what I want to write and what you all want to read seems to line up. Most of the time.
> 
> *steeples fingers, smiles ominously, lightning flickers in the background*


	14. in which Steve wakes up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING: This chapter pre-read by Rainne, who was reduced to all caps incoherency and random OUCHes. Read at your own risk.**

For Steve, there was no gradual slide into awareness, no slow waking. It was as if a switch had been flipped: one moment he was all instinct and _warmth, mates, safe, den,_ and the next he was awake, fully cognizant of all that had happened, and wrecked with it. He heard Bucky make a soft, concerned sound, and immediately focused on calming his racing heartbeat and relaxing his tension-filled muscles. Steve clenched his eyes shut and tried to breathe evenly, tried to calm his racing thoughts.

It was difficult to do that, though, when every breath he took was full of _Bucky_ and _soothing den smell_ and _Darcy, Omega, pregnant_. He shuddered involuntarily, nausea filling him as he remembered how scared she had been, the smells of fear and blood filling the room where they’d found her. He remembered the bonding, too, though it was a bit of a blur. He remembered how she’d resisted, even in the midst of her haze, with her Alpha trying to reassure her.

Her Alpha…

He was her Alpha too, now.

Steve could hear the two of them stirring, reacting to his emotional state, but he didn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t look at them; he didn’t want to see that telltale pink staining their eyes the way the haze had colored all of their choices. He had known that this was a possibility, he’d known that, but from this side of things… he knew now that he hadn’t been thinking clearly. His entire being had been focused on Bucky, getting to him and keeping him safe, his lost bondmate unexpectedly returned to him through truly horrifying circumstances. Now, though, now he was thinking of Darcy and he felt helpless for the first time in a long time. It was funny, in a twisted sort of way: he had everything he’d ever wanted when he had been young and dumb, with Bucky but incapable of being truly _with_ him.

Erskine’s formula had changed that; it had made him better and faster, strong enough to keep up with Bucky in a way that was beyond his reach before. He was supposed to be better, not great but at least _good_. He didn’t feel like a good man just then. Steve knew bonds, accidental ones, forced ones, haze-driven ones, weren’t unheard of in this day and age, though they were less common than they’d been in his own time, but he’d expected more of himself. He’d expected better. He was supposed to be Erskine’s success, and he’d never felt like more of a failure than right then and there, on the bed with the bondmate he’d lost and the bondmate he’d wronged.

It appeared that he hadn’t been able to keep as tight a lid on his responses as he would have preferred. Both of his bondmates were moving, now: Bucky rested one hand on his shoulder, firm and warm and grounding. Darcy edged up the bed from where she’d been sprawled and draped herself along Steve’s opposite side. She let out a soft humming noise and curled one arm over his chest, knocking her fist against Bucky’s arm to get him to lie down as well. Bucky grumbled a little, but acquiesced, slumping down and wedging his face against Steve’s neck, still making faint complaining noises even as he settled himself more firmly against his side.

Steve’s breath hitched, beyond his control at this point. This feeling, their care… he felt like he’d stolen it somehow, gotten it without earning it. He had no way of knowing how either of his bondmates would react when they came out of their respective hazes, but he doubted that _this_ \- these quiet touches, shared comfort – would be happening again anytime soon. It might never happen again, and that would be fair, understandable, and deserved. Steve had taken something that ought to be freely given; he’d wrecked something that had only started to grow. Maybe there would have been a place for him in the thing that Bucky had begun to build with Darcy, but he would never know, now.

He didn’t know what was worse: getting everything he’d ever wanted and knowing it was wrong, ill-gotten, ruined before it began… or having this, these memories of the past few days, of being _happy_ with his bondmates, and knowing that it was all a sham, it was the haze putting a soft film over something ugly. Maybe worst of all was knowing that he would treasure these memories, tainted as they were, because they would surely be better than what was to come.

Steve’s eyes prickled, but he forced the tears down. He didn’t deserve the release they’d bring.

…

It took another hour for Darcy and Bucky to feel satisfied with Steve’s state enough that they’d relax back into sleep, and another hour after that for him to extract himself from their embrace without waking or alarming them. Once done, he stood at the foot of the bed, watching them in the dimmed lighting. They’d curled closer together in his absence: Bucky on his side with one arm thrown over Darcy’s lower back, her lying partially on her stomach, one leg tangled with his.

Steve padded out of the room as quietly as he could and went to the farthest corner of the suite, putting as much distance between himself and his bondmates as he could before he looked up at the ceiling. “JARVIS?” he called softly.

“Here, Captain,” the AI answered immediately, vocal projection equally quiet.

“I need to talk to – “ Steve sighed, scrubbing one hand over his face. “Pepper? Can I talk to Ms. Potts? If she’s available…”

“Of course, I shall let her know you are awake, Captain.”

Two minutes later, the redheaded Alpha’s serious face was projected onto the far wall. Her rumpled appearance and sleep-tousled hair in no way detracted from the authority she projected, an authority that had Steve straightening almost unconsciously. “Steve,” she greeted him, and he felt something in his chest tighten at the reservation that had replaced her customary warmth. “Good to see you awake,” she said briskly. “What do you need?”

“I – Darcy.” He paused, licking his lips and trying to think. “She’ll need… she’ll _want_ space, when she comes to.”

“Dr. Foster has already prepared a room in her own suite, and I’ve had a second suite on her floor prepped as well, in case Ms. Lewis prefers solitude.”

Steve smiled, because of course she had. Pepper was nothing if not efficient. “I don’t know exactly how things are done in this time,” he said slowly. “Bonding matters weren’t exactly a priority in Fury’s 21st century tutorial. She’ll need an advocate? Someone to speak for her?”

Pepper startled a little at that. “You want an arbitrator for a dissolution? Steve…”

“It’s not about what I want. It’s about what’s right. She should have the choice. She should know all her options,” he said firmly, keeping his expression fixed and his voice level only by clenching his fists so tightly that his nails were digging into his palms. _No,_ he wanted to snarl, _I don’t want a dissolution. I want my mates!_ He wasn’t certain how much of that voice was leftover from his feral state and how much was just _him_ , though, so he throttled back his instinctive denial.

“Well, it might be best to start with someone to talk to,” she told him, obviously choosing her words with some care. “Someone neutral, a professional that can lay everything out for her – and for you and James, too – and be impartial while doing so.”

He nodded, “That sounds like a solid plan.”

“I already have a few candidates in mind,” Pepper said, eyeing him carefully.

“Thank you.”

She smiled a little at that, her expression warming for the first time since they’d started speaking. “I always forget that you’re so much more reasonable than Tony, or a lot of the Alphas I have to deal with.”

Instantly, Steve shut down. “I prided myself on that, once,” he said bitterly. “Look at me now.”

“Steve – “ Pepper said, one hand lifting towards the screen, almost as if she wanted to reach out to him.

“Bucky will want to stay with either Darcy or me,” he interjected; cutting off whatever platitude she’d been about to offer him. Whatever she said, it wouldn’t be as honest as her first, disapproving reaction. He’d earned her ire, but he hadn’t done anything to deserve her sympathy. “You can prep another suite for him if you want, but he’ll want to be near to one of us. I don’t – I can’t predict how Darcy will react to either of us when she wakes, so it might be best to be prepared.”

“And if she’s… comfortable with James, and not you?” she asked, studying him with an all-too-knowing look in her eyes.

“Then I guess you’d better prepare to move their stuff into that new suite,” he said tightly. “You know how the newly bonded are.”

“Steve,” she said again, and then sighed. “Have you considered what might happen if she _doesn’t_ want an arbitration? Or a dissolution?”

Steve shut his eyes and felt the nails of his right hand pierce the skin of his palm. “You go ahead and hope for the best, Ms. Potts, but experience has taught me I’m better off prepping for the worst. The hits you see coming don’t hurt quite as much.” He shook his head and brought himself back to the matter at hand. “Thank you for everything you have done, and will be doing to help sort this out.”

“Let me know if you think of anything else, Steve.”

“I will.”

She offered him one last sad smile before the wall want blank.

Steve rubbed his left hand over his eyes, holding his right out and away from his body to prevent any blood getting on his clothes. He didn’t want to alarm either of his bondmates with the mess, especially not when he’d likely be healed by the time they woke up. He turned to head back to the bedroom and stopped short at the sight of Bucky standing a little outside the doorway. One look at his face and Steve knew: Bucky was through the haze.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said after a moment. “Good to see you, jerk.”

Bucky’s face twisted with emotion and then he was moving, crossing the space between them before the blond could so much as blink and wrapping his arms tightly around him. Steve released a single, shuddery breath, and then slowly lifted his arms to wind them around his bondmate. He could feel dampness spreading across the shoulder of his shirt and pulled Bucky even closer in response, pressing his face into the juncture of the other man’s neck and shoulder and sucking in air flavored with _mate_ and _salt_ and _relief_ , a pain that went bone-deep but might now start to heal.

“I’ve got you,” he said, “I’ve got you, and so long as you want me, Buck, I’m never lettin’ you go again.”

Bucky laughed wetly against his neck. “’Course I want you, punk, what are you – dumb or somethin’?”

“But what I did – “

“What _we_ did, Stevie. I was there, too, much as either of us were really _there._ ” He pulled back a little to look up at Steve, though there wasn’t quite as much of a difference as the blond remembered there being. “You’ve been mine and I’ve been yours since we were kids. Nothing’s gonna change that, ‘less you _want_ to change it.”

“Buck – no, why would you even – “

“Because I’ve done things, and I wasn’t even hazed. I was just… I was a gun and they pointed me and said ‘shoot’… so I did.”

“And I don’t blame you for that anymore than I’d blame a gun,” Steve said firmly. He fisted a hand in the hair at the back of Bucky’s neck and twisted it, making the brunet hiss, but he looked at him, _really_ looked at him. “I love you, James Buchanan Barnes, and nothing you’ve done in the last seventy-odd years, _including_ ,” he said, trying to inject a bit of humor into the situation, “getting yourself bonded to and knockin’ up an Omega, is gonna change that.”

The way Bucky positively _lit up_ at the mention of Darcy made Steve’s heart clench. “She’s amazing,” he breathed out. “She’s….” his face fell abruptly, eyes dulling into something flat and blank. “She’s not going to forgive this,” he said, and he started to tremble in Steve’s arms. “She told me – when I told her about you,” Bucky went on, fingers clutching at his bondmate. “She told me she was too young, it was too fast and she – she wasn’t ready for what happened ‘tween _us_ , let alone everything with you… she’s not – when she wakes up she won’t want anythin’ to do with me – with _us_ …”

He was shaking so hard it was making Steve’s teeth rattle, and he – he couldn’t think of a single thing he could say to make this better. He couldn’t fix this. He didn’t even know if he should try. All he could do was hold Bucky while he shook and cried, and promise to be there, to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky just sort of… snuck in there, guys. That was not how I intended this section to go.
> 
> Also, I have started posting ~things on my tumblr, so, maybe check it out? IDK. All of my main stuff will still be posted here, but drabbles and ficlets and prompts will stay _there_ until they get too big, or develop their own storylines (please, Thor, no). Check out the "amuse writes stuff" tag, if you're interested.


	15. in which a misconception is corrected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BARELY UNDER THE WIRE, ha.

The next few days were some of the worst that Steve had ever experienced. Bucky couldn’t hide his distress from Darcy, and in her present state her natural reaction was to try and comfort him. Everything Steve had experienced, all the guilt and self-recrimination, Bucky felt too. Where Steve had a certain amount of control, a baseline he could draw on and – after the past few years – a helluva lot of experience repressing and compartmentalizing his reactions, Bucky had none of that. Bucky had seventy-odd years of being Hydra’s personal blackboard of being, used for drawing on and erasing. Underneath the dust he had outlines of who he used to be. From what Steve could tell, he’d been piecing himself back together, figuring things out, and then everything went straight back to hell when Hydra attacked.

Sometimes Bucky could keep it together: he could hold Darcy or touch her, interact with her in her half-feral state and be fine. Other times something would set him off and he’d stare at her, wide-eyed and hands starting up a fine tremble, until her concern had her snuggling up against his side and throwing him headlong into a spiral of _shame_ and _pain_ mixed with the inherent _pleasure_ of being close to his bonded. The more Darcy tried to fix it, the worse Bucky got. Steve made the mistake of leaving them alone while they were both awake exactly _once_. By the time he got out of the shower, they were both crying: Bucky’s body one long line of rigid tension as he tried, and failed, to keep himself together, and Darcy whimpering over him, nudging at his shoulder and plucking at his arms, trying to get him to just _look_ at her.

Eventually Steve figured out a rhythm to it: whenever Bucky started getting that look about his eyes, he’d lay a hand on the brunet’s shoulder and push him towards the kitchen. Then he’d curl up with Darcy while Bucky baked, or cleaned, or found _something_ to do with himself while he calmed back down. It achieved the aim of keeping Bucky, and therefore Darcy, from falling into another broken cycle of hurt/comfort. There was nothing Darcy could do to fix what was ailing Bucky, especially not when even her desire to do so was rendered suspect and therefore painful by the circumstances of their bond.

Of course, while all of this kept _Bucky_ from further harm, it was hell on Steve. Every time Darcy curled into him, every time she _reached_ for him, every satisfied sigh or gentle smile hurt like being shot - specifically: being shot by Bucky. It felt like a reminder of all of his failures, everything he’d done wrong that had led them here, to this moment. Like all the ghosts and what-ifs and could haves and should haves were running through his mind all at once and rubbing his heart raw, leaving it wounded and bleeding.

But Darcy didn’t deserve to suffer for what they’d done, not now when she was half out of her mind and relying on them, and not later, when she finally would wake and end this purgatory. That was certain and rock-solid in his head, which meant that there was no choice at all: he would take his lumps, because he’d earned them, and in so doing he would protect his bondmates. It wouldn’t be enough to make up for all that had happened, but it was all he could do, just then, to help.

…

“Have you got a list yet, J?” Tony asked idly, glancing up from his current project (pants for Hulk).

“Yes, sir, Miss Potts is reviewing it now.”

“Oh, well, in _that_ case…” He flicked aside the screen he’d been looking at and started a vid call to Pepper’s office. “Hiya, honey,” he said with a winning smile as her face appeared on his screen. She jerked in surprise to see him replacing whatever she’d been working on, then huffed. “So, what have we got on the headshrinker front?” he asked, ignoring her pique.

“Eight names from a variety of practices around the country. I’ve already sent feelers out to five of them – two are already on their way.”

Tony considered that. “I hate to be the one to say this, but do you really think that somebody who would drop all of their existing patients and come running at the sound of my name and jingling pockets is a good choice?”

Pepper blinked. “That’s… JARVIS, please contact Drs. Manse and Krusoe and inform them that their services will not be needed.”

“Yes, Miss Potts.”

“That leaves us with six headshrinkers, just enough to change a light bulb – “

“Tony.”

“Might want to see which of those six have room in their schedules before letting any more people know that there’s a big ol’ psychological to-do at Avengers Tower,” he pointed out, switching back to serious in an instant.

Pepper sighed and rubbed at her temples. “This isn’t something I have a lot of experience with,” she said after a moment, voice oddly small in a way that made Tony sit up and take notice.

“Squishy sciences are so… squishy,” he said, waiting till she looked at him again before giving her a soft smile. “But! Between us we have enough squish to make up for our hard… huh, that got a lot dirtier than I had intended.”

She smiled back at him, shoulders squaring and spine straightening under her bondmate’s fond regard. Her voice, when she spoke, was back to that firm, confident tone that characterized her business dealings: “We need experts who value people, doctors with a good balance of experience and skill. JARVIS, please run your search again, with these new criteria.”

“Running it against my previously collected information, there are five doctors who might suit.”

Pepper nodded decisively, “Send out feelers and find out who can come to the Tower in the next few days. Use the standard NDA _before_ the offer, our people can come up with something a bit more specific before we actually interview them. Speaking of which… how, exactly, do we want to do this?”

Tony shrugged, “Throw ‘em all in a room with Steve and keep the least starry-eyed? I don’t know.”

“Tempting, but no,” she said dryly, then sighed. “He’s… he’s not doing well, Tony.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “Is that surprising to you?”

“No, not exactly. I suppose I thought he’d be… different, when he woke up, that he’d… change somehow? It’s just strange to see someone like Steve haze and then…” She frowned. “I’ve never seen anything like that before, Tony, and I don’t want to again. I’ve never _felt_ \- even with Extremis, I never lost myself like that. I was _angry_ , but it wasn’t that all-consuming – it’s…”

“It’s not like anything else you’ll ever experience, Pep, and I hope to god it never happens to you,” he said softly.

“Tony…?”

He looked down. “In… the desert. After the car battery but before Iron Man. Yeah. For a while. I don’t remember much.”

“Oh, Tony…” she trailed off, just staring at him. “All right, that’s it. JARVIS, please let me know if any of the doctors contact you, keep me apprised of the situation. Otherwise hold everything, I’m taking the day.”

“Wait, no, Pepper – “

“Relax, Tony, you don’t have to talk about it. You don’t even need to leave the lab, just… I need to see you.”

He snorted. “If I’d known this squishy stuff would make you take a day, I might have been more forthcoming during that whole palladium thing.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“Okay, no, probably not, but I would have _considered_ it. Give me five and I’ll meet you in the penthouse. We’ll make a day of it.”

Pepper grinned, “Mr. Stark, are you trying to seduce me?”

“Always.”

…

Two days passed before Steve felt comfortable slipping away for another conversation with Pepper. It took him about that long to feel as though he could face her again. Bucky and Darcy were asleep, likely to stay that way for the rest of the night, so he slid from their bed and headed to the far room. The lights brightened without him touching anything, or saying a word, so he gave a brief nod to the ceiling. “JARVIS, could you get ahold of Ms. Potts for me?”

“At once, sir.”

Again, it took only a few moments before the wall lit up with Pepper’s face. At least this time it didn’t look as if he’d woken her. She was dressed casually, though not for sleep, but there was something on her shoulder – 

“Hey, Cap,” Tony said, leaning into view.

“Tony,” he nodded to the other man, unconsciously stiffening under the other man’s scrutiny.

“Steve, it’s good to see you. How are you?” Pepper asked.

“Been better,” he said, shrugging. “Any word on what we talked about?”

“You mean the – “

“Headshrinkers?” Tony cut in.

Pepper rolled her eyes heavenward. “We’ve been having some trouble. The first one who fit the criteria and made it to the interview, ah – “

“Nearly creamed his panties when he realized he would be dealing with _the_ Captain America. Guess there are Coulsons in all walks of life, huh, Cap?”

“Yes,” the redhead sighed. “Unfortunately, that is… accurate. He signed the NDAs and has been invited _not_ to return.”

Steve tried not to blame himself and his own notoriety for making it that much harder to find someone to help Darcy… and failed. “And the others? There _have_ been others, right? You said the ‘first’…”

“Well – “ Pepper exchanged a look with Tony. “The second – “

“Nearly started foaming at the mouth when we got to the supersoldier bits. I could practically _see_ her writing the prologue to her next book.”

“She seemed to be viewing the matter through a more academic lens than would be preferable,” Pepper said a bit more diplomatically.

“So, nothing yet.”

“Not… necessarily,” she hedged, exchanging another look with Tony. “There was one, a Dr. Renard, who seemed like she might be a good fit. She had excellent credentials, and she seemed interested in _Darcy_ , not in the science or, well, _you_.”

“But?”

“She’s got all the warmth of an ice cube, Cap, and I don’t mean a you-shaped ice cube, I mean _actual ice_.”

“She did seem a bit reserved,” Pepper agreed, “although that might be because she knows we’re not telling her everything yet. Tony thinks – “

“I want your permission to show some of the footage the feeds have collected to the headshrinkers,” he said bluntly. “Not _all_ of them,” he went on, making a cutting motion with his hand, “just the ones who pass the prelims and don’t seem like complete – “ he wiggled his fingers and made a sound like ‘ooheeooh.

Steve squashed his instantaneous, instinctive denial at the thought of his privacy being invaded further, of his _bondmates_ being put on display. “Do you think it would help?” he asked instead. “How?”

“Everyone’s different in a haze. I think it’d help them get a feel for what we’re trying to convey. It _is_ kind of hard to get across ‘supersoldier’ to somebody who’s only read about you in history books. Might be easier to show, not tell.”

“I… trust you to choose what to show and who to show, just… be careful?” Steve cautioned, knowing it was unnecessary but needing to say the words regardless. He hoped he wouldn’t regret making this choice, especially since he was making it for both of his bondmates as well.

Pepper and Tony both nodded solemnly.

“All right, well, I should probably get back to – “ he tilted his head towards the door. “I’ll ask again tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Steve.”

“’Night, Cap. Hah! Nightcap!”

Pepper elbowed him.

“Okay, bad timing: _goodnight_ , Steve.”

He nodded to the duo, giving them a small smile that dropped off his face the instant the screen winked out. No use pretending when there wasn’t anyone to benefit. He wondered, for a second, if he should have asked for final say on the footage used. _No_ , he decided, _Tony and Pepper might not be impartial, exactly, but they’re a helluva lot less involved than I am._ Better to let them decide, after all – they had been completely cognizant for the whole of it, while Steve barely remembered a thing.

Of course, if he had known then what would end up being the most useful footage, he might have said something. But he didn’t know, and neither Tony nor Pepper would ever tell him, Bucky, or Darcy that the most telling footage compiled was from the moments just after she finally woke from her haze.

…

Dr. Olympia Weaver waited until the imposing Beta with the too-sharp blue eyes left the small office before looking down at the Starkpad she had been provided. This was, without a doubt, the strangest consult she had ever done. She hadn’t even met her prospective patients yet and they already ranked on her top ten list of ‘most extraordinary.’ There was still a part of her, a not inconsiderable part, which thought this might all be some elaborate hoax put on by Stark. Still, the time, energy, and manpower devoted to it…

She glanced down at the NDA, then the Starkpad. The device, she had been informed, would not become workable until she had signed the form. Olympia wasn’t sure what sort of monitoring system they had in place – nothing so crude as a two-way mirror for Stark’s glittering abode – but the lengths they were going to, well, she was curious. Very curious. Her own lawyers had already vetted the NDA. She wasn’t sure exactly how that had worked, but she had been provided a phone with which to contact them.

She wouldn’t lose her soul by signing. She wasn’t sure what she’d lose if she _didn’t_ sign.

Sighing, she grabbed up the pen the intimidating Ms. Hill had left behind and wrote her name. _Curiosity killed the cat,_ she thought as the Starkpad lit up all on its own, showcasing nothing but a single ‘play’ button, _but satisfaction brought it back,_ she finished the adage, and tapped it.

There was no sound on the video, but it wasn’t really necessary when the body language spoke volumes. There were two male Alphas and one female Omega, and all three were hazed. Olympia watched the Alphas orbit the Omega, and each other. There was something familiar about the blond Alpha… but his face wasn’t important, and wouldn’t tell her much. She dismissed it as inconsequential and moved on. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was meant to be looking for. It _seemed_ , at first glance, like a home video – albeit a lavish one – of a relatively typical end to a pure heat between bondmates.

Then the video skipped, the blond and brunet Alphas awake now, out of their haze, and she began to understand.

She watched their orbit warp, barely holding.

The video skipped again: the two Alphas each sat on opposite sides of their large bed, watched the Omega lying in the middle. The Omega probably wasn’t sleeping, but had her eyes shut while she frowned, twitching every so often, clearly on the cusp of coming out of her haze. The brunet Alpha’s hand – not the incredibly advanced-looking metal prosthetic, but his flesh hand – made an aborted gesture, as if he had considered reaching out to his bondmate and then rejected the notion. The blond’s shoulders twitched, as if he had been about to speak. Both Alphas abruptly sat straight up, their focus completely locked onto their third.

The Omega opened her eyes.

The brunet Alpha said something, perhaps her name, but fell silent as soon as she turned her head and looked at him. The way the camera was positioned, Olympia could not see her face, but she saw the way the brunet Alpha reacted to it. He nearly _cringed_ , close to falling off the bed.

The blond twitched again and the Omega turned towards him, and the camera. Olympia studied her face: she had the exaggerated, lush features that typified classic Omega beauty standards. Currently, though, her face was frozen into an impassive mask. Scent didn’t translate through a screen, but Olympia was willing to bet her PhD that the Omega on her screen was putting out _anger_ and _distress_ on a grand scale. The blond seemed to shrink under her gaze and then actually _looked away_ , blatantly avoiding it. After a moment, the Omega stood and walked from the room, out of view of the camera. Left behind, the brunet finally lost his battle with gravity, falling off of the bed and partially out of sight. What little she could see of him led Olympia to believe that he had curled into a fetal position. The blond curled forward, echoing his dark-haired counterpart for a moment before he slowly stood and began to circle around the bed, likely aiming to comfort the other Alpha.

The screen went black, then, and the door to the office opened, revealing Ms. Hill.

She came back to her seat and settled opposite Olympia, curling her fingers together on the tabletop and fixing the other woman with her steady gaze. “You are here because you are one of the foremost experts in the country on trauma-bonds, PTSD, and war-time bonding. The video you have just watched is of your potential patients.”

Olympia raised her eyebrows. “From what I saw, I can understand why you brought me in. If those two Alphas aren’t vets who have seen recent combat, I will eat my shoes. However, I think I should make one thing clear before you decide whether or not you would like me to take the next step in your _unique_ hiring process.“

“And that is?”

“ _That_ ,” Olympia tapped one finger on the screen of the Starkpad, “is not a trauma-bond.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: I have been looking forward to this reveal for _a while_. Yes, I will be explaining exactly what a trauma-bond is (from an expert's perspective, and not Darcy's rather limited one [this is why I added the unreliable narrator tag, because she is the perspective character but she's not always right in her assumptions]) and how it differentiates from _traumatized people_ bonding.


	16. in which Darcy deals, take two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _All of the introspection. All of it._
> 
> Barring anymore catastrophic or life-changing events, we should be back to the regular posting schedule. I wish I hadn't had to miss a week but, Shit Went Down. Also, it is rather hard to get into the mood for this story when my brain is vacillating between "how can I help the grieving people" and "OMG CINDERELLA WAS SO SPARKLY ROMANTIC I WANT ROMANCE THINGS."
> 
> Thank you, Rainne. :-)

Darcy didn’t look back when she heard a soft _thump_ , or the heartbreaking whine that followed it. She kept walking through the familiar-yet-not apartment, trying to hold herself together and find a freaking _exit_ at the same time. “Door,” she muttered, “there has to be a door – yeah, that’s not freaky at all.”

The wall opposite her had _slid down_ revealing a large, empty hallway. It was definitely not the strangest thing she had seen in the last few years, so she headed that way and hoped for the best. The wall slid back up as soon as she had passed it, leaving her alone in a long - _very_ long – hallway that looked like the sort you’d find in a swanky hotel. There were a few doors in sight, but she wasn’t sure how much that meant considering the _walls could move_. It was all very Labyrinth, and she half-expected a worm to pop up beside her with a cheerful greeting.

_That might be hysteria talking,_ she realized, only… she wasn’t feeling particularly hysterical. She wasn’t sure _what_ she was feeling. There was a roiling, horrible, pervasive feeling of upset and unease filling her, but she couldn’t parse it out into its components. Darcy wasn’t sure if she felt more _angry_ or _sad_ or _overwhelmed_ or _betrayed_ or _helpless_ , but she felt a mixture of all of them, so much so that she was close to coming out the other side of the emotional tunnel into numb land. Close, but not there yet, she noted, looking down at her hands. They’d curled into fists the instant she really woke up and she didn’t think she could get herself to let go.

“What now?” Darcy said, looking around. There was nobody there –

“Ms. Lewis?”

She jumped, eyes darting every which way. Still nobody there, _that she could **see** …_ “Are you invisible?”

“No, miss, I’m not actually physically present. I am Mr. Stark’s butler, JARVIS.”

“Oh. Wait, Stark?”

“Yes, miss, you are currently standing in the hallway of the 56th floor of Stark Tower in New York.”

“Huh.” Darcy was not really sure how to react to that. “Can you direct me to a room? I… I’d like a shower. And clothes. And food. Not necessarily in that order.”

“Certainly, miss. Would you like company as well?”

That was unexpected. “Who’re my options?”

“Doctors Foster and Selvig, as well as Prince Thor, are current residents – “

“Jane?” Darcy asked, feeling something like relief. “Jane and Thor are here?”

“Yes, miss, shall I – “

“No, I don’t want to see anyone right now. I just want – I _need_ some time. And a room. And that other stuff I asked about.”

“Of course, miss. Would you like to go to your own suite, or perhaps your room in Dr. Foster’s?”

“I have my _own_ suite?” she asked, a touch incredulous. “How long was I out of it? Wait! Don’t answer that. I don’t think I’m ready to know that.” Darcy groaned, rubbing a hand over her face. “I’ve got to call my parents,” she realized. “I’ve got to – no,” she shook her head. “Baby steps. Um… is there anyone in Jane’s suite right now?”

“No, miss.”

“Can you…” her words trailed off as she briefly debated whether or not she would feel guilty about kicking her friend out of her own suite before deciding she just didn’t care. Darcy squared her shoulders, looking up at the ceiling for a lack of anywhere better to focus on while talking to the remote butler: “Can you please make sure nobody bothers me in Jane’s suite until I say? If they really need something, they can go to my suite, I guess.” She wanted to have _something_ familiar, and after working and living with Jane for several years, the scent of the Alpha who was like a sister to her was _exactly_ what she craved.

“Of course, miss. Please follow the blue lights.”

Bemused, Darcy watched as a line of light appeared in the wall, leading towards one of the doors she had noticed earlier. She gamely followed, opening the door and finding a small room that housed the silver doors of an elevator. “Well, that seems needlessly complicated,” she murmured, feeling more and more like she was tumbling down a rabbit hole. Luckily, when she got in the elevator it started going _up_ , so she felt a little better, but… “Swear to god, if this ride ends with a little table holding a bottle that says ‘Drink me’ or a cookie that says ‘Eat me’ – “ She didn’t get a chance to finish her threat before the doors opened, revealing another small room with three doors: one set in each wall.

“Take the one straight ahead, miss,” JARVIS instructed.

She opened this door to find a living room and – she took a deep breath – an apartment fairly _saturated_ with the smells of Jane, Thor, and even Erik. She’d never been much of a scent fiend, but she took three steps forward and fell into the nearest couch, smooshing her face into the fabric and taking deep, greedy inhalations until she felt settled. Satisfied, she looked up and gave a low whistle. “These’re nice digs, wonder if mine’s the same or the junior version.”

“Your suite is identical in furniture and layout, miss. There is a budget for you to redecorate…?”

“One thing at a time, Jarvis. Uh… are you going to answer all of my rhetorical questions?”

“As I do not currently have a baseline for your normal speech patterns, I am unsure which of your queries are rhetorical and which are genuine,” he said stiltedly.

_That_ made her shoot a skeptical look up at the ceiling. “Somebody asked you to keep an eye on me, huh?”

“… It may have been suggested that I would be the least intrusive option, yes. Would you like me to, ah, ‘butt out’?”

Darcy wrinkled her nose, thinking. “Nah,” she decided, “keep on answering. I reserve the right to change my mind about that, though.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Where’s Jane’s bedroom?”

“Third door on your left, miss.”

“Thanks,” she said, rising and heading to the aforementioned door. The room it opened into was large, almost as big as the whole of Jane’s London flat. Darcy didn’t know why that threw her, but it did. The room had an even more concentrated ‘Jane’ smell than the living area but, surprisingly, had much less ‘Thor.’ She frowned, then shrugged and looked around until she located a closet. It was kind of comforting to see that nothing had really changed in _that_ area, even with the move from tiny London flat to massive Stark suite. Apparently Jane still considered ‘folding’ to be some obscure art and preferred to throw her clothing onto various shelves, organized by function. Darcy found some oversized lounging clothes and then looked around again. “Towels?”

“Inside the bathroom, miss.”

She nodded and then started opening doors until she found the bathroom. It was almost as big as Jane’s bedroom had been. There was a tub recessed into the ground and a large shower with frosted glass walls and a row of sinks under a huge mirror and… Darcy squinted at everything for a long moment before deciding that _no_ , she was not going to allow herself to be overwhelmed by the _bathroom_ , of all things. She explored the cupboards, finding a stack of luxuriously thick towels and a wide assortment of soaps that were unfamiliar. Darcy squinted at them suspiciously, then cracked open the shower to see Jane’s familiar drugstore generic shampoo and soap sitting in easy reach. It brought a small smile to her face, the first since she’d woken up.

With everything she needed at her fingertips, Darcy took a deep breath and turned towards the mirror. _Déjà vu all over again,_ she thought to herself as she took in her reflection. Her hair was much less tangled than she would have - _there were fingers in her hair, straightening it out and gently detangling it, pulling it back from her face and into a braid_ \- she staggered against the counter as the sense-memory opened up like a flower blooming in her mind. “Fuck,” she muttered to herself, staring at her eyes, wide and shocked in the mirror.

“Miss?”

“I’m okay, Jarvis. Just. Remembering things.” She straightened, prepared to pull the shirt she was wearing over her head, and then froze. “Um. Jarvis?”

“Yes, miss?”

“Could you please turn off whatever monitoring stuff you have on me for the rest of the time I’m in the bathroom?”

There was a brief pause, and then a somewhat apologetic, “I can cease the audio and visual feeds, but I will need to monitor your general health.”

“How will you do that?”

“I have a multitude of sensors available to me, keeping track of your heart rate and respiratory patterns.”

“And I can’t convince you to turn them off?” she asked, starting to feel something hot and ugly pressing at the back of her throat and behind her eyes.

“… I have asked for and received permission to do so for now. Is there anything else?”

He wasn’t outright saying it, but Darcy got the impression that he disapproved. “It’s not that I’m not grateful, I am,” she found herself explaining, even as she slumped against the counter by the sink. “It’s just that I’m probably going to have a freak out sometime in the next hour or so, and I really don’t want any interruptions.”

“Understood, miss,” and this time his tone was _definitely_ apologetic. “May I reestablish contact with you when you reenter the living areas?”

“Yes,” she decided. “Bye for now, Jarvis.”

“Indeed, miss.”

Darcy waited a second or two, but she had no real way of knowing if he had done what she asked, so she would just have to trust him. She stripped off her clothes, a t-shirt and shorts that she had never seen before, soft cotton that smelled like her Alphas, and studied herself. There were no bruises this time, and the cuts she had received from that nutjob goon were gone. There wasn’t even a scar. The only real change to her appearance was the second bonding bite on her neck. Darcy leaned over the sink to get closer to the mirror, brushing her hair to one side and craning her neck to get the best view. The second mark, Steve’s mark, didn’t cover Bucky’s – they overlapped a little but they were separate and distinct. Bucky’s was a little deeper; Steve’s a lot larger. Both were completely healed, and silvery white against her fair skin.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” she whispered, tracing the marks with a shaking hand. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

Darcy turned on her heel and leapt into the shower, scrambling the get the knobs twisted and turned until there was hot water beating down on her from all sides. She stood under the water for a full minute, just breathing and letting it pound against her skin, then grabbed Jane’s shampoo and lathered up her hair. It rinsed quickly under all that water, and she had a moment of incredulity, wondering if Tony Stark had started all his green energy initiatives out of guilt for how much water his showers took. She shut that thought to one side and reached for one of the washcloths stacked in the corner of the shower, soaping it up and scrubbing herself down thoroughly.

She didn’t really let herself start thinking until she’d washed every inch of herself and finger-combed Jane’s conditioner through her hair. Then it wasn’t one thing, it was _every_ thing. Starting with being kidnapped from that Greyhound station and ending up here, in goddamn _Stark Tower_. Darcy didn’t even know what the date was, how many days she’d lost to this last haze, but her life had been a clusterfuck from that one, concrete starting point and – she glanced down at her still-flat (or at least not obviously showing) tummy, hand rising to cup the marks on her neck – it didn’t look like that was going to be changing anytime soon.

Her heat had been at least a few weeks ago, so – “Eight months. Eightish months?” she muttered to herself. “I’ll be bonded at least that long.”

Darcy felt her way over to the bench against the back of the shower wall and sat down, then curled over and put her face in her hands. She didn’t even know where to begin to start processing everything. Literally had no idea. Which traumatic thing did she want to start with? The kidnapping? Bonding? Being on the run? Being attacked and tortured? Bonding _again?_ It was all so very _many_ different kinds of fucked up. All of it, from start to finish. She just felt… lost. She felt tears start to prickle at her eyes and let them flow. Darcy wasn’t entirely sure why she was crying, even, but it felt like a release, it felt _good_ , and so she let her body do what it wanted to.

She cried into her hands until her eyes felt sore and started to sting and then she stood with her face lifted to the hot water until she felt relatively okay again. When she finally stepped out of the shower, she’d spent so long in there that she’d washed all traces of Jane’s soap away. Darcy smelled like water and her Alphas and pregnant Omega, but it didn’t really bother her. She was confused about a lot of things at the moment, had no idea what the future had in store for her, or how the past few months might continue to screw with her, but she was in Jane’s apartment and she wasn’t on the run. She felt safe in a way that she didn’t think she’d be able to explain (and the fact that some of that safety stemmed from knowing her _Alphas_ were safe was not something she particularly wanted to examine at that moment) and she felt… hopeful.

Things weren’t okay right now, but Darcy felt like she had the space and the time now, to sit down and figure out a way they _could_ be.


	17. in which friends are reunited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most people who read my stuff know I am a _diehard_ Jane  & Darcy friend/bro-shipper. This fic is not an exception to that rule. **WARNING, there is minor discussion of abortion in this chapter, and there will be more discussion of/introspective thinking about abortion in the chapters to come. Just warning you.**
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for the beta, Rainne.

Darcy was sitting on the sofa (sprawled over half of it, more like) catching up on bad television when JARVIS interrupted her with a quiet cough. “Are you prepared for company yet, miss?”

It had been an hour or so since she’d showered, and she’d spent most of the time since on the couch. She tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling and considered. “Who is it?”

“Dr. Foster.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, miss.”

Darcy shut her eyes, thinking. She prodded at her internal emotional state and found it decidedly wobbly. There was a really good chance she would end up crying again if Jane came in anytime soon. But, honestly, there was a really good chance she’d end up crying again if that stupid commercial with the car and the kid and all the animals came on again. “Are there tissues anywhere in this apartment?”

“I believe so, miss.”

“Then sure, let her in.”

She didn’t brace herself, per se, but she did twist around so that she was facing the door and had her back up against the arm of the couch. She thought she could keep it together, stay calm, for about a second. Then the door opened on nothing, and Jane was just _there_ and Darcy was standing and running across the room, straight into the other woman’s arms before she knew what was happening. There were a great deal of tears (on both sides), as well as reassurances (mostly Darcy’s), and self-recrimination (mostly Jane’s). It took them at least a half-hour to make it to the couch, and by that time both of them had red eyes, wet shirts, and were distinctly sniffly. They ended up facing each other, more or less, knees angled towards each other and pressed up close, hands clutched together in the small space between.

“I’m – I’m so _sorry_ ,” Jane hiccupped. “We didn’t even _notice_ – “

“They had people studying my social media feeds like you study _stars_ , Janey. I don’t – I don’t blame you. Do you – do you know if my family…?”

She pressed her lips together until they went white. “They didn’t know you were coming, so we just... didn’t tell them you were missing once we figured it out. We were going to,” she hastened on. “We didn’t know how to tell them without completely freaking them out and if – if whoever took you still thought they had everyone fooled, Thor said there was a better chance. Then everything with Hydra happened and – and your mom called me, she was so _angry_ when your part in my research came out, and I told her – I told her what I knew, then.” Jane took a deep breath, clearly thinking hard. “When we got our first lead,” she said slowly, “I called her, and I told her we’d figured out who had taken you, and also that you’d escaped. I called her again when you were… found. She knows you were kidnapped, and held, and she knows who did it. That’s all.”

“Ugh,” Darcy dropped her head back onto the couch again. “She’s probably imagining the _worst_ right now.”

Jane’s hands clenched _hard_ around hers before relaxing. “But isn’t that what happened?” she asked softly. “What could be – “

“I’m alive, aren’t I?” she asked. “And… what he - _they_ \- had planned for me…” She remembered his voice. She remembered everything he’d ever said to her, every terrifying promise, every sweetly-spoken threat, every single “gorgeous” and the casual way he’d called her _his_ , and always that ever-present menace underlying his words. “It could have been worse,” she said hoarsely. “Trust me. It could have been _much worse_.”

“Darcy…”

“I don’t – don’t ask me right now, Jane. Please. I can’t talk about it.” She was feeling shaky just _thinking_ about it. Maybe that was silly, but after everything she’d been through the thing that still scared her most was _him_. Not the man who’d tortured her, the man who’d _talked_ at her. “I might want to talk about it at some point – “ _fat chance_ , “ – but for now, no. Closed. I am tabling that one indefinitely.”

Jane nodded, frowning. “All right, what about,” she tilted her head towards Darcy’s stomach.

She looked down and her eyes went wide. “Oh, right,” she said faintly. “That.”

“Don’t tell me you forgot?” Jane asked, somewhere between amused and horrified.

“I didn’t _forget_ , I just haven’t really thought about the… reality of it? There’s been a lot on my mind,” she defended.

“It’s. Darcy, you – “ Jane blew out a breath, then continued on, face turned to its ‘doggedly determined’ setting, “It doesn’t _have_ to be a reality. You don’t have to do this. It’s early, termination is a viable option and it’s one I want you to think about. You have _options_ , Darcy, you have _choices_ and I want you to think about _all of them_.”

She tugged her hands free from the other woman’s and held them out, palm up, miming a scale. “Have baby, do _not_ have baby,” she said, raising and lowering her hands with a mock considering look on her face.

“Darcy…”

“It’s either joke or cry, and my eyes already hurt,” she said. “And I… I’ll think about it. It’s – I don’t – “ she slumped down in her seat, eyes flicking over the room until she was staring at the blank television screen. “This isn’t something I ever thought I would have to think about,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t – just, what the _hell_ , Jane? I get kidnapped by psychos looking to use me for some sort of freaking science espionage?! What is that? What _is_ that?!”

“I’m sorry,” Jane whispered.

“What?” Darcy frowned at the older woman, then rolled her own eyes when she saw tears in Jane’s. “Don’t,” she said shortly, “do not take this shit on yourself. I am _not_ blaming you, this is _not your fault_. Seriously, who could have foreseen this? _Nobody_ , okay? Jesus.” She scrubbed at her face with her hands, knowing that rubbing at her itchy eyes wasn’t the best of ideas, but doing it anyways. “God… and then I get saved by Bucky Barnes, which – who even knew he was alive? And now with,” she drew a circle in the air and then sketched a star in the center of it, then sighed. “Two months ago, I was a single female Omega abroad in Europe. I was the start of every single Euro-horror film _ever_. Figures I’d have to come home to actually end up in some sort of – “ she scowled, then snorted. “I take it back, this crap’s not even B-level horror, it’s like… it’s _Z_ -level. At best.”

“If that’s how you think about all of this,” Jane began carefully, “if you’re putting it in terms of horror films, then… maybe that should tell you something about what your decision should be.” She threw up a hand when Darcy opened her mouth, “Stop. Look, I just. I don’t want you to feel obligated, or pressured, or anything, okay? I want you to make the best choice for _you_ , and I want you to know that I will defend whatever choice you make. With Thor’s hammer, if necessary.”

“Can you pick it up?” Darcy asked, genuinely curious.

“No, but I’m on relatively decent terms with the only one who can,” she said wryly.

“Well, thanks. I mean it, I…” she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, taking a deep breath. “I don’t know what I want,” she admitted. “I don’t even really know how to feel right now, Jane. I’m so… I’m _angry_.”

“You have every right to be,” Jane said immediately.

“Yeah, but - ” She huffed, shaking her head. “I’m _so many things_ , right now, Jane. I feel like I’m – like I’m being pulled in about eight different directions right now. I feel _so much_ , but I just – I don’t know who I’m feeling _at_ or _for_ or _what_. It’s all just a mess of – of – “

“Feelings?”

“Pretty much.” Darcy rubbed at a spot over her heart absently, then – of their own accord – her fingers crept up to her neck. The mark felt slightly warmer than the rest of her skin, and she rested her hand against it, still surprised that it didn’t hurt, or twinge, or feel like much of _anything_ really. Her skin was still her skin, she supposed, even if she felt differently about certain bits of it. “I want time,” she decided. “I want time and space, and I want to just sit and _be_ for a while. I don’t want to run, or feel like I’m being hunted. I don’t want to feel like I have to worry about anything but just figuring this shit out. Can I do that?”

“Of course you can!” Jane reached over and pulled Darcy to her, wrapping her up in a surprisingly sturdy hug, considering that she was actually a bit smaller than the Omega. “You’re still on the books as my assistant, you know, and the best way you can assist me right now is by working on _this_ , however and whenever you want. No pressure, no time limits, just you. I just… I want you to be okay,” she said, voice gone small and tremulous in a way that Darcy associated with the drunken version of Jane who rambled about missing Thor.

“I want me to be okay, too,” she told her, taking a deep breath of the other woman’s comforting Alpha smell. “Jane?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Being you.”

“… It’s the only thing I know how to be?”

Darcy snorted. “Yeah, well, you’re good at it. Keep on keepin’ on.” She adjusted their positions a little so that she was leaning on Jane instead of outright embracing her. “Can I stay in here, for now?” she asked abruptly. “I know that Jarvis said I had my own apartment, but I’d rather… just for now.”

“Of course. Erik sleeps in with me whenever he can _manage_ to sleep. Thor’s got his own space, and we, ah, we usually use that for, um – “

“Nookie?”

“Couple time,” Jane said primly. “But we all basically live out of this apartment. Is that okay? Do you want it to be just me and you? We can do that?”

She thought about it, chewing her lip. “I’ve missed Erik, and Thor… Thor should be fine. Nobody else, though. Not right now.”

“Doable. When did you want…?”

“Dinner? Can we just… hang out for a while first? But then, dinner. Definitely.”

“Whatever you want, Darcy.”

“Oh, _really?_ ” she put a little mischief into her smile and snatched up the remote. “Because I’ve fallen _behind_ , Janey.”

“Oh god,” Jane rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth were twitching upwards. “Please be kidding.”

“Nope!” Darcy crowed. “It’s soap time!”

They settled down with some grumbling (on Jane’s side) and mock chastising (on Darcy’s), and it was sort of like other days they’d had in New Mexico, in Tromso, in London. It was familiar in a way that made Darcy press closer to the other woman, and made Jane press back. It was _good_ , it was _normal_ , and it was something that – not too long ago - she hadn’t thought she’d get back.

For every normal thing, though, there was something else, something decidedly _new_ that threw her, just a little. Like the way Jane smelled to her now, slightly flat. Like the way she was _aware_ that Jane was an Alpha, in a way she never had been before. Like the ways she still hurt, felt bruised and torn up inside, all the emotions she couldn’t sort out sitting like a tangle of thorns and broken glass, lodged somewhere high up under her ribs.

There were still so many things she would have to figure out, unwind, _deal_ with, but - _That’s a problem for tomorrow’s Darcy_ , she decided, and snuggled closer to Jane. She turned her focus to the soap opera, trying to pick up what she’d missed and focus on problems on the screen that were, somehow, more dramatic than her own (she didn’t have an evil, mate-stealing doppelganger from another dimension, after all).

(That she knew of.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has sent me well-wishes and support on the job and home fronts, I really appreciate it. I am surprisingly shitty at expressing my own feelings, considering what my hobby is, but _thank you_.
> 
> EDITED 11/25/17
> 
> After 2.5 years, I am marking this story as complete and not abandoned/unfinished because there is a complete arc here. I will mark it as part of a series to indicate that there’s more to this story but hell if I know whether I’ll ever continue it. There’s still a lot to say here and there’s still a lot I had planned but this story has been my greatest triumph and my greatest failure as a fanfiction writer. After a certain point the failures weigh on me more than the triumph uplifts me.
> 
> I still look on this as some of my best writing, definitely one of the stories that helped me grow and made me the writer I am even today. On he flip side, it’s also been a story that has illuminated how damaging the comment structure and the desire for feedback can become. Comments matter, and while I love and appreciate all of the positive feedback I’ve gotten over the years, the negative stuff just sticks with you.
> 
> At some point I may post more bits and bobs of what my plans were for this universe. I will not be “gifting” this work out for other people to write continuations of it, so please don’t ask. If you have any specific questions about this, you can find me on tumblr with the same name.


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